The Hero's Curse
by Anica106
Summary: A trainer starts her journey. The world could care less. Another, slightly twisted take on the games. Coauthored with shadowsquirl.
1. Shadows, an argument, a beginning

A/N: Hey, everyone. This is an original-trainer fic that's a joint effort between me and my brother, shadowsquirl, and it follows quasi-game canon, not show canon. It's our take on the games, starting with the Kanto saga, which we've set in something resembling the Leaf Green version. We've given characters relationships and personalities that were not there in the games or, as far as we know, the anime, but it's for a good reason and hopefully it'll be fun enough to make up for it. (grins) Enjoy.

o

The Hero's Curse

Chapter 1--Shadows, an argument, a beginning

His footsteps echoed on the polished tile as he strode purposefully down the seemingly endless hallway. The building was dark in its disuse, the torches unlit, and the only light came from the small windows lining the vaulted ceiling. The weak patches of sunlight were too faint and far apart to be of any use. It would have been impossible to see a waiting attacker until it was far too late.

He did not take notice. He knew this place, and was known here, and had lived in darkness far too long to be bothered by it now.

He paused on the threshold of an enormous set of stone doors carved with intimidating Pokemon and ancient, unreadable symbols. He fingered a small computer disc in his coat pocket, as if to reassure himself that it was there, and allowed himself a slight sneer before arranging his features into a blank, emotionless mask and placing his hands against the doors, feeling them open slowly as he let his weight fall against them.

The room was vast and windowless, even darker than the hallway outside. He could not see. He waited.

There was a small _click_, and a patch of light appeared in the center of the battle arena he knew accounted for most of the room's space. With the aid of the new, sharp light, he could just make out the figure seated in the chair—the _throne_—on the opposite side of the ring.

He was glad of the darkness. He detested pretentiousness, and could feel his lip curling again in contempt. He struggled to keep his face impassive as he faced the seated figure, who made no move to acknowledge his presence.

He knew what was expected of him. He walked briskly to the center of the arena and knelt in the patch of light, his face betraying no sign of distaste. He lowered his head and again waited, his eyes focused on the floor in front of him where the light met the darkness.

"I assume you have it?" Her voice was low and cold.

"Yes"—he swallowed—"Master. It was not difficult to obtain."

She inclined her head, and immediately a young man in a white lab coat hurried from her side into the circle of light, taking the disc from his hand without looking at him.

"Show me," the woman ordered idly, and the lab technician disappeared back into the darkness. A moment later, a large screen on one of the side walls flickered to life, bathing all three figures in an eerie, bluish light. The woman turned to face the screen, her gaze finally leaving his. He stayed where he was, knowing better than to rise, but his eyes were drawn to the light as well, and he watched as words and pictures, images of people, began to appear on the monitor.

The woman was silent for several seconds. When she spoke, it was in a tone of deep skepticism. "Are you sure about this?"

He knew why she doubted. "I am certain. These are the highest ranked trainers in Kanto, excluding Gym Leaders and the Elite Four."

She shook her head in disbelief. "Children," she marveled, rising and taking a few steps toward the screen. "The best of them are children."

He watched her stroke the arrow icon on the monitor, scrolling down the list and bringing up more names, more faces. Meghan Moss. Cody Jacobs. Shannon Leigh. Tabitha Starling. Seth Starling. Ben Sakura. Michael Lane. None were older than twenty. He watched her stare at them, her eyes narrowed.

"All right, then," she said abruptly, turning again to face him. "You know what to do. Take as many of ours as you think you'll need. Track them down, and either recruit them or silence them. Then you can begin dealing with Leaders. I want this done quickly."

He bowed again and rose without a word, turning and making his way back across the deserted arena. He had just reached the doors when she called his name, her tone smooth and deadly. He halted, not turning around.

She watched him, her eyes glittering faintly. "_Don't_ fail."

Giovanni smiled thinly, and faded into the shadows.

o

Professor Oak faced the glare of the fourteen-year-old boy before him resolutely, refusing to back down and wondering how he had gotten himself into this. The child could hardly stand still he was so livid, and his right hand twitched convulsively, as if longing to shove the pokeballs on his belt down the professor's throat.

"Let me see if I've got this," he said in a low, dangerous voice. "Sabrina says the world's going to end. The older trainers, the Gym Leaders, the Elite Four, the strongest in Kanto, get together and pool their collective intelligence to decide if there's a way out."

"Ben—"

"And their _brilliant_ plan," he continued, raising his voice, "is to do nothing themselves, leave all their level sixty-plus pokemon sitting on their hands, and leave the whole thing to my _sister_."

Professor Oak said mildly, "I'm sure if they'd felt there was another solution—"

"How is _this_ a solution?" Ben yelled, practically vibrating with anger. "What were they thinking? What am I supposed to do, bring it up at dinner tomorrow? The world's going to end, and I know you're not a trainer, you've never even wanted to be a trainer, but the Pokemon League thinks you'd be the best one to handle it, so…just go take down whoever's behind it, no big deal. And by the way, there's no real specific timetable on that world ending thing, so…better get moving!"

Professor Oak frowned. "Lance thinks—"

"I don't give a damn about Lance!"

"That we should trust what Sabrina saw," the professor continued firmly. "If you disagree, you're welcome to take it up with him, but you know Sabrina far better than I do, and even I know that she's never been wrong, and that she's not one to overstate the facts. If she says it's the world at stake…well, she also says your sister can stop it, and if we trust her on the one, why not on the other? More to the point, if she is wrong, what hope do we have?"

At the mention of Sabrina's name, Ben had stopped pacing and closed his eyes. Now he seemed to deflate, turning to face the professor and lowering his eyes in silent apology.

"This is ridiculous," he said dully. "Where did this come from? All of the sudden the world's…and we don't know when, or how?"

"We're lucky to have Sabrina's warning," said the professor. "It means she can train, Ben. We can only hope we do have time." He moved as if to put a hand on the boy's shoulder, but seemed to think better of it. "I've spoken with your mother. I didn't explain the whole situation, of course, but I told her Katie would be an invaluable help in my research, and she agreed that if Katie wants to…" He sighed. "You should send her to me tomorrow morning."

Ben looked up sharply. "Tomorrow?"

"We can't afford to wait," Professor Oak said gently. "Tomorrow is her birthday, after all. It's the traditional time to begin."

"Her _seventeenth_ birthday," Ben muttered, gazing at the ground again. "I assume you have a Pokemon to give her? Or did the League decide she's supposed to fight with her bare hands?"

Professor Oak reached into his pocket and extracted a pokeball. "We don't have anyone turning ten in Pallet anytime soon, so I haven't ordered any lately, but there was one left from last year's bunch—one of the boys decided at the last minute he'd rather not leave home."

"Smart kid," Ben answered, staring at the plain red-and-white sphere. "This thing's going to save the world, huh? I guess the pokemon weren't given a choice either." He shook his head, and the bitterness returned to his voice. "Great birthday present, sending her out to get killed."

The professor met his eyes. "Surely you have more faith in her than that," he said softly.

Ben was still for a moment, holding Professor Oak's gaze. He took a breath, then nodded as if he'd come to a decision. "Tomorrow," he said heavily, and turned to leave.

o

"Did you take care of it?"

Professor Oak frowned into the vidphone. "I broke the news to him," he answered, his tone reproachful. "She won't know until tomorrow. I feel like a monster, you know."

"Feel however you want," Lance answered, rather callously. He paused. "How did Ben take it?"

The professor sighed. "About how I thought he would. I wasn't sure he'd go along with it, at first."

"He will," said Lance with a shrug. "He's stubborn, not stupid. He knows what has to be done. And he has the hero's curse. He can't sit and do nothing while this is happening. He'll exhaust himself trying to stop it."

"When was the last time you slept?" the professor asked, folding his hands on the table in front of him.

Lance considered, then shrugged. "Who sleeps anymore?" he asked dryly, and cut their connection. The professor sat staring at the blank screen for a long time before finally getting up to go to bed.

o

When Katie woke on her birthday, it was to warm sunlight spilling in through her window and the sound of her mother frying pancakes downstairs. She smiled and stretched, savoring the feeling of the sheets on her skin, then swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood up. She walked across the room to her closet, the hardwood floor cool on her feet, and dressed quickly, tossing her nightgown haphazardly back onto her bed.

When she went to brush her hair, she saw a new white hat with a pink border sitting on the polished wood of her dresser, and a birthday card in her mother's handwriting propped up against it. She grinned and brushed her long, straight brown hair until she was satisfied, then put on the hat, checking her reflection in the mirror. The effect was nice, she thought. She grinned at the mirror again and almost skipped to the door, the smell of pancakes making her mouth water.

She turned the corner into the hallway, and was surprised to find her brother leaning against the wall next to her door, red cap pulled down over his light brown hair and arms crossed, staring intently at the floor. He looked up quickly as she passed, apparently startled out of some kind of reverie.

"Morning," she said with a grin. "What's up? You look like you're dressed to go somewhere."

His face twitched, but when he looked up at her he was smiling. "Not everybody sleeps till ten in the morning. I went out. Happy birthday. Mom made pancakes."

"I know." Katie sighed happily as she headed towards the stairs. "I've eaten university food for so long I've almost forgotten what a _real_ breakfast tastes like." She paused when she realized Ben wasn't following her and turned back around, her expression slightly concerned. "Are you sure nothing's wrong?"

Ben hesitated, then suddenly bolted past her down the hallway. "Race you!"

He ran down the stairs as fast as he could, ignoring her shout of protest and closing his eyes tight, as if he could shut out what he didn't want to see.

o

Twenty minutes and five pancakes later, Katie leaned back in her chair and looked from her mother to Ben, both of whom had kept shooting glances at her throughout the entire meal when they thought she wasn't looking. Her mother was putting away the syrup, wearing a small, quivering smile as if she was barely restraining some thrilling secret. Her brother was poking moodily at the remains of his breakfast, occasionally casting dark glances out the south window toward the Pokemon Research Lab.

She cleared her throat. "Don't take this the wrong way," she said, causing both of them to turn and look at her, "but what's the matter with you two? You've been acting weird all morning."

They exchanged glances—her mother's excited, Ben's almost panicked—and her mother closed the refrigerator and sat down next to Ben at the table.

"I talked with Professor Oak yesterday afternoon," her mother began, wiping her hands on her apron. "He wonders if you'd mind doing him a favor."

Ben snorted. Katie stared at him, puzzled, then turned back to her mother. "Yeah, sure, if I can. What does he need?"

"Well…" her mother hesitated. "It might be better if he explained it himself. He said to tell you to come by the lab this morning and he'll give you all the details."

o

Katie had always thought that the Oak Pokemon Research Lab was rather informal and cozy for a scientific laboratory. She liked visiting; the atmosphere, as a rule, was pleasant and relaxed, and everyone there always seemed to be in a good mood. She knocked on the door, noticing with a smile how old and scratched the paint was, and slipped inside, breathing in the familiar smells of wood and cleaning supplies. She heard Ben close the door behind them and rolled her eyes. He had stalked out after her after her without a word after breakfast, his bad mood hovering around him almost visibly. Now he stood off to the side, leaning against the wall, with his arms crossed again. She shook her head and waved to Professor Oak, who was making his way toward them.

"Katie!" he smiled, grasping her shoulder warmly. "And Ben. I wonder if you two would follow me into my office? I'll try to clear everything up there. Would you like some coffee?"

"Yeah, please," Katie answered gratefully. Ben rolled his eyes and shook his head. She frowned at him, then turned to follow the professor.

"Happy birthday, by the way," he said over his shoulder. "You're seventeen, aren't you? You finished school this spring, then?"

"Uh-huh," she replied. "I just graduated about a month ago. It's good to be back home."

Professor Oak smiled gently. "Five years is a long time, isn't it? It's hard for me to keep track of everyone who leaves."

He ushered them into the small room toward the back of the laboratory that served as his office and closed the door behind them. Katie liked this room, too. There were his bookshelves, neatly packed with volumes on everything imaginable to do with pokemon, his desk, overflowing with papers, his computer, with the e-mail light flashing, and a large window on the right-hand wall that let in a plentiful amount of sunlight.

Katie stretched as she looked around, and noticed a single pokeball on the table off to one side of the room. _That's odd_, she thought. _Who's starting? _She didn't think there were any new ten-year-olds in Pallet, but then again, she'd been gone for so long it was possible she'd forgotten about someone. _Or maybe it's just for his research._ She suddenly realized the professor was speaking and hastily turned her attention back to him.

"How much do you know about pokemon, Katie?" he asked as he poured a cup of steaming coffee and handed it to her.

Katie considered. "Well…I've never trained one. And I've never really studied them like a lot of people do. I've just, you know, read books and seen movies and things about trainers. And in Vermillion, where the university was, they had a gym, so sometimes some of us would go down there and watch the battles. I guess I probably know a few basic things." She looked at him curiously. "Why?"

Professor Oak took a sip of his own coffee. "How would you feel about becoming a trainer yourself?"

She looked up from her drink, startled. Beside her, Ben shifted in his chair restlessly. "Well…I mean, pokemon are interesting, and I'd like to know about them, but I decided to go to the university instead, didn't I? I wanted to learn about all sorts of things besides pokemon, and I don't think I'd've done very well as a trainer anyway. I'm not very aggressive, you know? And I've never tried to live in the woods or anything." She smiled uncertainly at the professor. She'd had to explain herself to her professors at school, too, but it had been a long time since anyone had asked her why she hadn't decided to become a trainer. She glanced uneasily at the pokeball on the professor's desk.

"And what are your plans now that you've finished school?" Professor Oak's voice was still light and casual.

Katie shrugged uncomfortably. "Well…I guess nothing, right away," she said rather lamely. "I mean, I have a little time to look around and see what I want to do now, right?" She shook her head. "I'm really still not sure what I want to do." The truth was, she had found it hard to even imagine life after school.

"Well, if that's the case," the professor said, putting down his cup and smiling again, "why don't you give training a try? Pokemon are something that it really is a shame to miss out on, even if you're not aiming for the championship. And I have a feeling you'd enjoy it more than you might think." When Katie hesitated, he added, "It would also be a shame if your decision about your career wasn't fully informed. Don't you think you should try a bit of everything?"

She knew he was right (in fact, she thought she had always felt that way; wasn't that what she had been trying to do at the university?), but…she took another drink of coffee to buy time and thought of the stories she had read when she was younger. The legends of the great trainers, their boldness and power…she had daydreamed about living those stories, having splendid adventures with her Pokemon (and the kind, courageous people she'd surely meet along the way). But at the same time, the thought of being alone…she looked at the ground, not sure how to voice her thoughts.

"You could do it, you know," said a quiet voice to her left. She turned around, startled. She'd forgotten Ben was there, he'd been so quiet. "Training pokemon, I mean. It's not the easiest thing in the world but it's not impossible either. And…well, I mean, _I_ did it. You were always better than me at most things anyway."

"That's not true," she answered distantly. "I never tried half the things you did." She sat up a little straighter, and met Professor Oak's eyes. "If you think I can…I mean, if you think I'm not too old, and if you have something to give me, I think I'd like to…to do this. At least for a while."

"Excellent," cried the professor. "I hoped you'd feel that way. Now…" He walked to the far wall and opened his closet, pulling out boxes as he rummaged around for something.

Katie turned to Ben and took a deep breath, feeling as shaky as if she'd just finished an exam. "Um…I just realized that I don't even know…what pokemon did you start with?"

Ben smiled a little. "Well…we were in Celadon over my tenth birthday. They were having the Gym Leaders' conference there that year, the big one where all of them come, from all over the world, and so we went to see Dad. And do you remember how he used to like to play video games and things?"

Katie smiled. She did remember.

"Well, Mom went shopping at the department store, and Dad and I went to the Game Corner and he got totally hooked. I was too young to really want to play, and I got bored watching so I just kind of explored, and I found all these coins on the ground that people had just dropped. By the end of the afternoon I had found more than Dad had made." His grin broadened. "I remember him laughing and telling me I was smarter than he was. And I begged him to let me buy a pokemon with it since it was my birthday, and…" He shrugged. "He gave in. It turns out I had enough for an abra. He's been with me ever since."

"But for you," said Professor Oak, making his way back over to them with a small plastic bag and the pokeball Katie had noticed earlier, "I think something a little more conventional should work just fine." He extended his hand, and it was a second before Katie realized that he wanted her to take the pokeball and open it herself. She took it nervously, and lightly pressed the button where the two halves met.

The ball opened with a _pop_, and a stream of red light poured out onto the ground, where it took shape and became solid. The creature blinked its large red eyes and looked around at them all, mildly interested.

Katie stared uncertainly. She knew what it was, and she also knew that the nine-year-olds, in their loud, excited conversations aboutwhich pokemon they were going to choose when their birthday came, generally decided that bulbasaur was for little kids. Even the older trainers usually agreed that it was the softest of the three offered. The bulbasaur blinked again and yawned placidly at her feet.

Ben seemed to know what she was thinking. "You want a well-balanced team," he said, kneeling to scratch under the bulbasaur's chin. "Bulbasaur's probably the strongest of its type you're going to find around here. And I know what they say, but a capable grass-type can pull more weight than a lot of people seem to think."

Katie looked at the bulbasaur again. "They don't think you can win, huh?" She remembered her tenth birthday, watching the others talking to their new pokemon, looking forward to school the next year but still feeling…the bulbasaur had discovered the ceiling light, and was staring at it openmouthed, tilting his head in fascination. Katie felt her lips twitch, and she suddenly plopped down on the floor and picked up the small pokemon, holding him in out the air in front of her. "It's settled, then," she told him. "But you have to have a name. It seems a little rude to just call you 'Bulbasaur.'"

She thought for a moment. "Raptor," she said decisively. "You look a little like the dinosaurs I studied at school. Is that okay?" The bulbasaur, still suspended in the air, looked at her as if he had slight doubts about her sanity, but seemed agreeable enough.

"So. His name's Raptor." She looked uncertainly at Professor Oak. "He is a he, isn't he?"

Professor Oak smiled. "He is." He handed her the plastic bag he'd taken out of the closet. "In here are your pokedex and a few pokeballs to get you started. I'm sure your brother will explain all your pokedex's features as you need them. You'll never remember anything I tell you right now."

_Her brother…_She felt suddenly dizzy. She couldn't have understood correctly.

"What…do you mean?" she asked faintly, looking at Ben and searching his face.

He smiled again. "There are places that I've missed, you know? And it would be…good…to battle again." He gazed past her out the window, suddenly seeming older than he was, his eyes longing for something Katie felt she wouldn't understand even if he tried to explain. He blinked, and refocused on her. "If you'll have me, that is."

Her heart leaped. She bounced up off the ground and beamed at Ben. "_Thank you_," she said forcefully, and hugged him, Raptor and all.

He looked a little embarrassed when she pulled away, but pleased all the same. "You should go pack. If we can start out this afternoon we might make it to Viridian by tomorrow night."

o

As Katie rushed out the door, a slightly bemused Raptor in tow, Professor Oak pulled Ben aside.

"I _know_," he sighed before the professor could say anything. "I'll tell her. I'll ruin her life, I promise, okay? Just let me do it on my own time."

"Do you think it will get easier to hear?" Professor Oak began collecting the empty coffee cups.

To the professor's surprise, Ben actually seemed to consider the question. "I think it might," he said finally. "There's something about being a trainer, a serious one. When you get a little more experienced, a little more confident...it's almost as if you start bracing yourself for something like this. You don't want it to happen, exactly, but...it's like there's nothing else that _could_ happen. Because nothing _but_ something like this could possibly end what you've started."

"The hero's curse?" Professor Oak said with a sigh. "Just keep in mind that we may not have a lot of time. She needs to get stronger quickly."

"I know that, too," Ben snapped. "Don't you thinkthat's why I'm going?"

Professor Oak smiled. "No. I don't. Take care of her, and of yourself. I'll see you soon over the phone if nothing else."

Ben nodded curtly and left, closing the door behind him.

o

After five years of living in a dormitory, packing for life on the road felt distinctly odd. Ben had to keep reminding her to bring things like scissors and silverware, things she never would have thought to bring on her own. She was proud of herself when she'd finished, and announced that she was ready to leave. After another thirty minutes, during which Ben patiently repacked for her, it really was time to leave. The good thing about having been away from home for the last five years was that it wasn't as hard to say goodbye to her mother as she'd been afraid it might. She would be back soon, after all.

"Both of you behave yourselves," she called after them. "And go to bed at a decent hour. And try to eat three good meals a day. And call me whenever you're somewhere with a phone! I love you both!"

They waved, and turned to head out of town. A swell of adrenaline and rose in Katie as they reached the gate, and she felt suddenly as if she might pass out. She stopped where she was, and Ben stopped with her, a solid, reassuring presence at her side. He watched her and waited, with no sign of impatience.

She swallowed and looked at him, her eyes wide. "Let's go?"

He nodded, and together they stepped out into the world.

o

A/N: Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Review and let us know. We might actually listen to you.(grins)


	2. Unwanted Acquisitions

A/N: Hi, it's me, shadowsquirl. Anica'll talk at the end. I know I've been kind of absent, but it seems that my job writing this fic is to think the big thoughts behind-the-scenes. (grins) Anica's job is to actually write the story, and to think up all the stuff that actually makes it interesting in the meantime. I see that the fic's gotten some good feedback, so I'll try to just keep on manipulating the game to suit my own ends and hope you keep liking it. Enjoy.

The Hero's Curse

Ch. 2--Unwanted Acquisitions

Katie wiped her forehead with her sleeve and leaned back against the trunk of the towering tree under which she was sitting. The bark felt cool on her cheek, a welcome relief from the sweltering June heat that had forced them, or at least her, to stop and rest frequently during the few hours they'd been traveling.

She was too worn-out to look down at her watch just now, but she guessed that it was around six o'clock. Ben stood in the shade of another tree a few feet away, staring out across the dirt path and apparently lost in thought. Raptor, who she'd let out for company, seemed to enjoy the sunlight and was sniffing around in a patch of the white flowers that grew along the roadside.

After a few minutes of watching him, Katie decided she might as well be doing something productive, so she pulled out her pokedex and, after figuring out how to work it, asked it for information on bulbasaur. It presented her with a few paragraphs of general information, an attack list, and a type match-up chart with the words "grass" and "poison" highlighted whenever they appeared. Katie bit her lip. She wasn't sure she'd been aware that bulbasaur were poison types, although it wasn't too surprising now that she looked at him. Despite knowing little about type advantages, she had figured that she could probably guess which types were good against grass—fire and probably ice, for a start—but poison made less sense to her. She supposed she had better look over this chart so she wouldn't get a nasty surprise in battle.

Ben had walked over to her, and was looking over her shoulder. "You'll get it," he assured her, correctly interpreting the look on her face. "It looks like a lot, but once you start using it in actual battles it'll get easier to remember."

"And I just make a fool of myself in the meantime, huh?" Katie couldn't help smiling.

Ben grinned back. "Yeah, basically. But you learn faster with trial and error than with trying to memorize it all at once. Speaking of…" He looked up at the sun, shielding his eyes. "We may as well go ahead and eat. Why don't you see if you can find a few pokemon to battle while we're here? We'll probably start meeting other trainers once we hit Viridian, and you should probably have some experience in case you get challenged."

Katie nodded, seeing the sense in this, and got to her feet, grimacing slightly as she brushed flecks of bark from her hair. She recalled Raptor and set off somewhat nervously into the grassy fields that surrounded the scattered trees on Route 1. She had been skeptical of the whole thing at first—surely, pokemon wouldn't come out of hiding just because she was looking for them—but Ben had assured her that most pokemon seemed to enjoy battles and some would even seek out trainers. Sure enough, she hadn't been searching long when a small purple creature she recognized as a ratatta scampered out of the grass to her right and fixed its eyes on her, its whiskers twitching as it sized her up.

Katie cautiously reached for Raptor's pokeball and tossed it a few feet from the ratatta, afraid that the pokemon might run if she spooked it. Raptor appeared in a flash of red light and took in his surroundings, regarding the ratatta evenly. He glanced back expectantly at Katie, who suddenly realized she needed to tell him what to do. The ratatta bared its teeth and prepared to lunge.

"T-tackle," Katie called, somehow afraid he might not listen. Raptor immediately took off at a run and slammed headlong into the ratatta. It stumbled and hissed, the wind obviously knocked out of it, then rushed back with a tackle of its own that didn't seem to faze Raptor too badly. Tackle was the only move Katie was sure of at this point, so she ordered another one. The ratatta took even longer to stand back up this time, and when it did it stayed back and began waving its tail back and forth, its eyes fixed on Raptor.

Katie watched the attack, a little anxious. Raptor looked slightly sick for a few seconds, but appeared to shake it off fairly quickly and tensed as if he wanted to attack again, so Katie called for one more tackle. At this point the ratatta fell to the ground, panting, and didn't get up, which Katie took to mean they had won. She walked over to check on Raptor, who plodded up to her enthusiastically and nuzzled her hand, making her grin. He was a little dirty, but didn't seem to be hurt, so she recalled him and walked on, looking left and right for movement in the grass.

Raptor defeated three more ratatta and, with a little more difficulty, two of the bird pokemon called pidgey before Katie decided they needed a break. She made her way back to the side of the path, where she could see smoke rising into the sky. When she emerged from the grass, she found Ben stirring a pot of soup that was cooking over a fire he'd made.

He laughed when he saw her. "Have fun?"

She realized she was covered in grass and grinned back, brushing a little off her clothes as she sat down beside him. "Yeah, it went a lot better than I thought for my first time. We beat five or six pokemon, but Raptor's pretty tired now."

"Let him rest till we get to Viridian tomorrow. You can train a little more after he's healed." Ben ladled some soup into a bowl and placed it in front of her, then scooped some out for himself. "If you run into an emergency there should be a potion in that bag Professor Oak gave you."

Katie sipped her soup gladly, only just realizing how hungry she was. After a minute, she remembered that Raptor needed to eat, too, so she let him out again and gave him a bowl of food, which he devoured right away. He yawned widely when he had finished, and Katie recalled him and stretched, leaning back to look up at the darkening sky.

"Shouldn't we get going?" she asked Ben, although more walking was really the last thing she felt like doing just now. "It'll be dark soon."

Ben shook his head. "We'll stay here tonight. The fire's already made and this is a nice spot to camp. I know it's a little early, but we should go on to bed in a little while so we can get up early tomorrow. If we start a little after sunrise, we'll probably make it to Viridian around dinnertime."

Katie covered a yawn. "Since when do you get up that early?"

"It's best to walk as far as you can each day when you're between cities like this," he answered as he gathered the dishes. "And believe me, it's more pleasant to travel while the sun's up."

She watched him stoke the fire and remembered how she used to tug his pillow out from under him, pulling him grumbling from his bed and into the kitchen for breakfast, giggling as he dragged his feet.

_Five years is a long time, isn't it?_

Her eyes filled suddenly, and a soft laugh escaped her lips at her silliness. Her brother looked up at her curiously. "What is it?"

She shook her head, the urge to cry vanishing as abruptly as it had come. She looked across the fire at him, smiling a little. "You've changed, Ben Sakura."

He regarded her with surprise for a moment, then smiled back, a little ruefully. "And you haven't changed at all."

"I won't," she promised, and this time it was his eyes that turned bright.

….

"This is a very bad idea." Lance's tone was even. "I thought you had more sense than this. Why didn't you stop him?"

The Professor met his gaze innocently in the vidphone. "I think you give me too much credit. My pokemon aren't nearly strong enough to keep him from doing anything."

"Don't give me that," Lance snapped, starting to get annoyed. "You could've talked him out of it if you'd tried. You wanted him to go with her."

"I did," the Professor agreed cheerfully. "They've missed each other. It will be good for them to have some time together to—"

"That's sweet," Lance cut in sarcastically. "But they won't have much to talk about if they're dead. I suppose it never crossed your mind that they're both in a lot more danger now that he's with her?"

"I should think the opposite would be true," Professor Oak returned mildly. "He's quite the trainer, after all. I'm sure he's capable of protecting her until she's ready to fight for herself."

"That's the _point_," Lance answered, frustrated. "He's a _very_ strong trainer, and I'm sure the person behind this crisis is on the lookout for anyone who might get in the way. He'll draw attention to himself if he battles, and our enemy might just decide to wipe them _both_ out."

"That is true," the Professor admitted. He paused. "What about you, then? And the Gym Leaders? You're all in danger too, by that logic."

Lance nodded. "I know. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do until we find out a little more about what we're facing. The best plan for us right now is probably to stay put and take our chances. As far as we know, the enemy isn't aware that we're on to him. If we start acting too strange, he might suspect something." He frowned. "Besides, better us in danger than that girl right now. Has she even been training for a day yet?"

"Katie's always been a fast learner," answered Professor Oak. "And despite the danger, I think Ben will be a help to her."

Lance rolled his eyes. "Whatever. My only comfort is that this has all probably occurred to him, too. Hopefully he won't go throwing his pokemon around recklessly."

"I'll pass the message along," the Professor said. "He's supposed to check in with me when they reach Viridian. Don't take offense, but he'll probably be more likely to listen if it comes from me."

Lance smirked ruefully. "You almost make it seem like we don't get along."

Professor Oak rolled his eyes a little. "In any case. You're not happy with him for pulling this stunt, don't battle if he can help it. Is there anything else I need to let them know?"

_A boy of twelve standing opposite him in his arena, trembling before his dragons, defiance flashing in his eyes…_"Tell him I said don't die," Lance said shortly, and hung up.

…

Katie had been to Viridian before. Her mother had often taken her there on her birthdays to shop at the big bookstores and movie stores Pallet didn't have. She had also spent the past five years living in Vermillion, a good-sized city, so it didn't faze her too badly when they reached the top of a hill and the city line suddenly appeared before them.

More than anything else, she was happy to see restaurants and hotels. She felt a little pathetic for feeling this way after only two days on the road, but she had to admit that she was very much looking forward to having a bath later on, and a meal that she didn't have to cook.

The pokemon center was easy to find. The gigantic red-and-white sphere that formed the building's roof was visible from a block away. Katie nearly moaned in delight as they stepped through the sliding doors and were met with a burst of cool air.

Her eyes adjusted to the soft light and she looked around curiously. She had never had a reason to visit a pokemon center, but it looked more or less the same as they always did on TV. The Nurse Joy was giving instructions to two chansey wearing white hats, who bustled off cheerfully toward the elevator. The open space that took up the rest of the building was littered with tables and chairs, of which about a third were occupied by chattering trainers. More trainers were gathered around the TV in the corner, some watching the news, others admiring a clefairy that was apparently the newest acquisition of the girl with the long blonde braid standing next to it. A delicious smell of frying chicken permeated the room.

Ben wandered off to watch TV, and Katie made her way nervously to the counter. There was no line, and Nurse Joy smiled at her encouragingly. "Hello there. I don't think I've seen you around before."

Katie shook her head. "No, I…I've never been here before." Was she supposed to just ask? "Would you…um, please heal my bulbasaur? I don't think he's very hurt, but…"

"Of course," Nurse Joy replied, and held out her hand. Katie parted somewhat reluctantly with Raptor's pokeball. Nurse Joy laughed when she saw her face. "You're new, aren't you? Don't worry, you'll have him back before you know it."

Embarrassed, Katie muttered a thank you and turned to scan the crowd for Ben. She walked over to the television area and found him lounging in an armchair, glaring with mild annoyance at the blonde girl Katie had seen earlier, who seemed to want something from him.

"You're being rude," she snapped, taking an aggressive step forward.

"I'm tired," Ben answered flatly, unfazed. "I've had a long day. And it's not like there aren't ten or fifteen other people here who'll fight you. Go away." He smiled at Katie as she made her way over to them. "Hi. All set?"

"Raptor's with Nurse Joy," Katie answered, gesturing toward the counter. The blonde girl strode over to her. She looked about Ben's age, or maybe a little older, and her blue eyes were forceful and haughty. "How about you?" she demanded. "Battle me? After you get your pokemon back? Three-on-three, okay?"

Ben threw the girl a sharp look. Katie took a step back, intimidated. "I—I don't have—" she stammered, going red and looking wildly around as if hoping for a rescue. "I—I only have one."

The girl frowned, then rolled her eyes. "I hate when people just train one. It's so boring." She flipped her braid over her shoulder. "Whatever. Just let me know when you're ready." She turned to walk off.

"Wait!" Katie called, and the girl turned around again impatiently. Katie swallowed and said, "I—what I meant was, I'm not sure I can battle you. I just got my first pokemon yesterday."

The girl raised her eyebrows. "What are you talking about? You've got to be older than I am!"

"I—I know," Katie answered, going even redder. More people were starting to look over at them curiously. "I just…I didn't start at the normal time. I had…other things to do, so…" The girl was still staring at her incredulously. "I'm sorry, but…I don't think I could possibly win against you, so…there's really no point."

The girl studied her for a moment, her piercing gaze making Katie uncomfortable. The girl's lips curved slightly, and she shared a look with a brown-haired girl who had come to stand beside her while they had been talking. "What do you mean?" she asked Katie coldly. "You're not allowed to say no if someone asks you to battle. They could take away your license for that." The brown-haired girl started to giggle.

Katie's fists clenched. They were obviously laughing at her, but what if they were telling the truth? She _didn't_ know anything about how battles worked. She said nothing, staring at the blonde girl, who was still looking at her with her eyebrows raised, and her friend, who had clapped a hand over her mouth and was shaking with silent laughter.

"That's enough," said a low voice to their right. The blonde girl finally took her eyes off Katie to stare arrogantly at Ben, who stood beside them with his hands in his pockets, unimpressed. "If you don't have anything better to do than this, you'd probably be better off spending the time training. That clefairy you took out earlier needs work."

The brown-haired girl stopped laughing. The blonde girl flushed a little and narrowed her eyes. "Prove it. _Fight_ me."

Ben met her eyes and held them. The blonde girl flinched. She intensified her glare;

Ben's expression didn't change. Finally the girl snorted and turned, marching away from them and beckoning imperiously to her friend.

"Katie Sakura!" came a voice from across the room. Katie turned automatically; it was Nurse Joy, leaning over the counter in order to see her. "Your pokemon is ready!"

Ben turned, smiling, to Katie. "They've started serving dinner. I'm starving after all that walking today. Do you want to just eat here? It's best if we stay here tonight, anyway; it'll be cheaper than a hotel."

"That sounds good," Katie answered, uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on them. Ben stood on tiptoes to see over the crowd.

"It doesn't look like there's much of a line right now," he said. "Let's go ahead." He started to edge his way past chairs and people, Katie trailing behind him.

…

It was an uneventful night after that. Neither one of them was challenged again, and they spent the evening watching TV and talking with other trainers. When Nurse Joy suggested that the trainers who would be staying overnight get ready for bed, Katie sought out the bathroom and took a long, hot shower before sinking into the soft warmth of her cot.

…

Ben told her he had some things he needed to take care of after breakfast the next morning, and suggested that she do some more training outside the city limits, though he warned her not to try to go too far. Katie was curious, and a little nervous about going out alone, but she knew she needed to train, so she agreed to meet him for lunch back in the pokemon center and ventured out into the misty morning, heading west toward Route 22.

Here she met several pokemon she'd never seen before: male and female nidoran (Katie had halfheartedly tried to capture one; the creature had burst out of the ball and fled) and an odd, stout little pokemon her pokedex informed her was called mankey. Raptor did well, defeating each opponent as it challenged them. Katie felt sure he was at least stronger than he had been when she'd left Pallet.

They left another defeated ratatta and moved on through the grass, Katie on the lookout for another nidoran—she'd liked the pale blue of the female. A little farther down the path she once again heard movement ahead of her and tensed, her hand tightening around Raptor's pokeball.

A bird pokemon she'd never seen before trotted out of the grass, preening itself and not paying her any attention. Everything about this pokemon was sharp; red feathers jetted out aggressively from its wings, and its claws and hooked beak, built for ripping and tearing, ended in wicked points.

Katie approached cautiously. She would have liked to have taken out her pokedex and asked for information, but the pokemon, who still had not taken any notice of her, looked as though it might bolt at an unexpected noise. She drew out Raptor's pokeball and tossed it as gently as she could.

Raptor appeared in a flash of light, and the strange pokemon turned its head sharply. It glared unblinkingly at Raptor for a moment, then suddenly puffed up and took flight, launching itself toward him like a missile.

Caught by surprise, Katie didn't have time to order an attack before the pokemon slammed into Raptor, slashing at him with its beak and sending him stumbling backward into the grass. It backed up, preparing for another attack.

"Leech seed!" Katie yelled, and Raptor struggled to his feet and fired a volley of pellets at the airborne pokemon. It squalled and propelled itself higher, out of range of the attack. The seeds fell harmlessly to the ground, and the bird pokemon shrieked again and hurled itself down at Raptor, its claws outstretched.

"T-tackle," Katie called for lack of a better idea, but the pokemon was in the air and Raptor didn't seem to know what to do. They were within a foot of each other now, and Raptor made a haphazard sort of lunge for the pokemon, but it dodged him easily and maneuvered around behind him, digging its claws into the bulb on his back and ripping at the back of his head with its beak.

Katie stood paralyzed. What should she do? She couldn't think of an attack that would help Raptor out of this. He cried out in pain, and Katie snapped out of her panic and grabbed his pokeball, preparing to return him. Raptor wailed again, and two vines shot out of his back to grab the bird pokemon, who screeched in surprise and struggled to get loose. Raptor flung the pokemon as hard as he could away from him, and it slammed into a tree a few feet away and struggled to stay airborne, dazed. Raptor ran at it, swaying a little from side to side, and smashed it once more against the tree, grunting with the effort. The pokemon dropped to the ground but kept its balance, favoring its right leg.

Raptor, however, was visibly panting. He had already been in six or seven battles that morning, and his legs trembled as he crouched to prepare for another attack. A green liquid Katie took to be blood oozed out of the cuts on his head and back. "Raptor?" she called uncertainly, but the bird pokemon was already moving. It flapped hard to get off the ground and rushed at Raptor, slashing and tearing with its claws and beak. Raptor collapsed and fell to the ground, unconscious. The pokemon took no notice, and continued to attack him viciously.

"No! No!" Katie yelled, fumbling for Raptor's pokeball. "Quit it! You won, get away! Return!" She jerked the pokeball off her belt and stretched out her arm; Raptor turned red and was pulled back inside. Katie sighed with relief and turned to run back to Viridian and the pokemon center. Before she'd taken four steps, a searing pain down her back made her cry out and stumble, going down hard and feeling her ankle twist. She gasped in pain and jerked her head around, searching for the source of the angry screeching coming from somewhere behind her.

The bird pokemon was hovering five or six feet above the ground, beating its bruised wings wildly and glaring furiously down at her. When it saw her look up, it shrieked again and plunged. Katie screamed and threw her arms over her head; the pokemon hovered over her and tore at the backs of her hands with its claws. She thrust her arms wildly every which-way until it flew out of range of them, and struggled to her feet. She started to run again, but the pain in her ankle made it impossible; she fell again and felt a rock cut into her elbow, drawing blood.

She forced herself to turn around. The pokemon was coming at her again, this time from straight ahead. She screamed again, more out of anger than out of fright this time, and pushed herself up with her arms and, ignoring the pain in her ankle, lunged toward the pokemon, allowing it to slam into her chest and wrapping both her arms around it as her momentum carried both of them down to the ground in a heap. The bird screeched and struggled as they rolled, scrabbling against her arms with its claws and drawing a line of blood across the bridge of her nose with its beak.

They finally slowed, and Katie pinned the pokemon's wing to the ground with her elbow, letting her whole weight fall behind it. She heard a _snap_, and the pokemon shrieked in pain. Katie rolled off the bird and scrambled on her hands and knees toward her fallen backpack a few feet away. She yanked it open and felt wildly around inside for the bag she'd gotten from Professor Oak. Her hand closed around one of her pokeballs, and she jerked it out and hurled it toward the pokemon, praying her aim was good enough.

It was. The pokemon's screeches faded away as it was pulled into the pokeball, which closed and fell to the ground, wobbling violently. Katie seized her backpack and forced herself to run, praying that she could get far enough away before the pokemon escaped and came after her again. She ran for a full thirty seconds before her leg finally gave out and she fell once again to the ground and stayed there, gasping for breath.

She lay still for a few minutes, shaking, before she realized the bird was no longer chasing her. She drew herself up and stood slowly, scanning the field for signs of movement. When she was satisfied that she was quite alone, and that Raptor's pokeball was still attached to her belt, she stood still for a few moments as something else occurred to her.

Slowly, she turned back the way she had come and limped back down the dirt path until she found the small red-and-white ball, now perfectly still, lying on the ground as if discarded. She stared at it numbly.

After a few minutes, she knelt to pick it up and began to make her way slowly back to Viridian.

…

Ben stood with his hands in his pockets in front of the Viridian City Gym, the morning sun warm on the back of his neck. The city was beginning to wake up, but the area around the gym was completely deserted, bare even of trainers coming to stare nervously at the building as they worked up the courage to make a challenge.

He narrowed his eyes. He had stayed in the center that morning to make a call to Professor Oak (who'd had little to say that Ben hadn't already worked out) and as he'd turned off the phone two trainers a little younger than himself had trudged inside, talking and looking disappointed about something.

"After we came all the way here," one boy had said indignantly, throwing himself into a chair by the window. "He didn't even leave a note saying when he was coming back. He could've done at least _that_ much so we wouldn't have to waste our time waiting for him."

"Don't Gym Leaders usually put the senior trainer in charge when they leave the gym anyway?" his friend had asked, sitting down opposite him. "So people can still get badges?"

"Yeah, but not even the _trainers_ are there," answered the first boy. "It's all locked up. I wonder if they're shutting it down for good."

Ben had left the pokemon center immediately, heading north to the gym. He'd found the door locked, the windows covered, and the sign out front ripped and unreadable. Now he stood staring at the deserted building, biting his lip pensively as he debated what this meant.

"_Lance thinks the Gym Leaders are in more danger than you are right now,"_ Professor Oak had said. "_Just try to keep your head down."_

He suddenly realized that he was no longer alone. A boy with a red crew cut was approaching the gym from across the street, walking with a deliberate, confident stride that told Ben he was an experienced trainer. When he reached the building he stopped and scowled, fingering the pokeballs on his belt absently. He crossed his arms, apparently deciding what to do next.

"Damn," he muttered, and kicked the locked door halfheartedly. As he turned to leave he spotted Ben, who was still watching him from a few feet away. He walked over to him. He looked to be about Katie's age.

"You a trainer here?" the boy asked, not bothering to hide the fact that he was sizing Ben up as he approached.

Ben let him. "No."

The boy threw the gym a dark look. "I've been trying to get in there for a month. It's the only Kanto badge I need." Ben glanced down at the boy's jacket, which was tied around his waist, and saw eight badges he didn't recognize pinned rather ostentatiously to the sides, and underneath them, seven from Kanto gym leaders.

The boy saw him looking and grinned smugly. "I'm from Hoenn. Lavaridge. I finished all the gyms there, figured I'd try for another eight." He rolled his eyes. "Blew through most of them, you know, since I'd already trained so much. But I heard this guy's pretty good, if he'd ever actually show up. People here say he's been gone for forever now."

"I got the badge from an under-trainer, and that was two years ago," Ben said, thinking out loud. "Maybe they _have_ decided it's not worth it to keep the gym running."

The boy raised his eyebrows. "You've got all eight, then?" he said, eyeing Ben with a lot more interest than he'd had earlier. "This is usually the last one people get here, right? How come you're still hanging around Viridian? You gonna go fight the Elite Four, or do you just live here?"

Ben shrugged, mildly annoyed. Something about the way the boy was looking at him made him uncomfortable. "I'm with my sister," he said evasively. "She's starting."

The boy grinned knowingly. "Babysitting, huh? It sucks being the oldest. Parents expect you to take care of the others, like you've got nothing better to do." He scratched the back of his hand. "My sister's the same age as me, so at least she wasn't just dead weight. We won the badges together, you know. Two-on-two."

Ben shrugged again, wishing he could walk away without being rude. Double battles weren't quite as in-fashion in Kanto as they were in other regions, but they weren't that uncommon.

"Yeah," said the boy. "She got bored waiting here and went on to Pewter. They're doing something with pokemon fossils she wants to hear about." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at Ben expectantly. "So what's your name?"

"Ben," he answered shortly. "Listen, I'm sorry, but I need to get back to the pokemon center. I'm meeting my sister there for lunch."

"Well I guess there's no use in me standing around here any longer," the boy replied, oblivious to Ben's rudeness. "I wonder what they're having today. Yesterday it was some chicken crap with orange sauce all over it."

Ben sighed and started walking, eager to get to the center and Katie as quickly as possible. The boy started jogging and caught up with him. "So, your sister. What's her name?"

"What's _your_ name?" Ben returned, resigned to polite conversation. "Sorry I didn't ask earlier, but…"

The boy's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Seth. Seth Starling."

…

Katie took a long drink of warm tea and leaned back in her chair, wincing as her clothes rubbed against the bandaged cut on her back. The bruises she had gathered that morning were beginning to ache, and the bag of ice Nurse Joy had given her stung on her swollen ankle.

She was more worried about her pokemon. The bird—the spearow, she had learned from her pokedex—had injured Raptor heavily, and between them they had done some pretty serious damage in return. Nurse Joy had assured her that she had seen much worse and that both pokemon would be all right, although she warned her to be more careful in the future about challenging pokemon like spearow with only a weakened bulbasaur in her arsenal.

She had then insisted that Katie take a bath and let the center's chansey clean and bandage her cuts. Katie had obliged happily. Now, forty-five minutes later, she sat in an armchair by the television, trying not to think about her propped-up ankle and wondering how long it would be before she and Ben could start traveling again. Her eyelids grew heavy, and the chatter of the other trainers faded into meaningless background noise as she drifted toward sleep.

She was jarred abruptly out of her almost-doze by the sound of hurriedly approaching footsteps. "Katie! What in the world happened?" Ben's voice, somewhere on her left, sounded frightened. Another, unfamiliar voice demanded, "_That's_ your sister?"

"Shut up," Ben snapped, and Katie opened her eyes. Her brother knelt beside her chair, taking inventory of her bruises and bandages. "When did this happen? Did someone attack you? Did they say anything to you?"

He was, she thought drowsily, much more worried about a few bruises and cuts than he should be. His eyes were wide and anxious, almost panicked, and he suddenly looked like the fourteen-year-old boy he was. He gripped her hand, and she squeezed it reassuringly. "I'm fine," she told him. "No one attacked me. Well, not a person, anyway. I got into a battle with a spearow and lost. I recalled Raptor, but I guess it just wasn't done fighting."

Ben let go of her hand, visibly relieved. "I'm glad you're all right," he said, moving to examine her injured ankle. "I should have thought to warn you. Spearow can be dangerous."

"There was a thing on the news a few months ago, when we were in Fuchsia," said another voice, and she jumped—she had forgotten about the other boy. "Some trainer got into it with a whole flock of the little bastards down on Route 17. Ended up losing an arm."

Katie sat very still. She didn't want to think about what might have happened to her if she'd been up against more than one of the creatures. Ben shot the boy an irritated look, and Katie forced a shaky smile. "I guess I'll be more careful from now on, huh?" She turned to examine the redheaded boy, more to escape Ben's concerned gaze than anything else. He wasn't particularly attractive, but something about his eyes held Katie's attention. They were dark blue, and made her think of icy water.

He smiled, the expression sudden and fleeting. "I'm Seth Starling," he informed her, holding out a pale hand. "I met your brother this morning."

Katie shook it, noticing that it was unusually warm. "Katie Sakura," she answered, smiling back uncertainly.

Seth's eyebrows shot up. "Sakura?" he repeated incredulously. "You're not related to Norman Sakura, are you?"

"Yeah, he's our father," Katie replied, surprised. Not many people at the university had known or cared about a gym leader in a distant region.

"Your brother didn't tell me," Seth said, with a reproachful glance at Ben. "I'm from Hoenn. I battled your dad a few years ago."

"You fought Dad?" Katie asked eagerly. "I've never seen him battle. What was it like? Did you win?"

"See for yourself," he answered with a slight smirk, untying his jacket from around his waist and tossing it to her. She caught it and ran her fingers over the many badges pinned to its front. Eight were polished, with sharp edges, contrasting with seven plumper, more rounded badges underneath. Among those on top she found her father's badge: a set of scales, perfectly balanced. She lingered over it for a few seconds, fingering its polished surface and wondering if her mother had talked to her father lately, told him about her becoming a trainer.

"You guys headed to Pewter?" Seth was asking Ben, who nodded warily.

"As soon as Katie's ankle can handle it," he answered. "It could be a while."

Katie raised her eyebrows at Ben. Seth smiled at her. "Mind some company? It doesn't look like I'm going to be fighting a gym battle anytime soon, so I may as well go meet up with my sister. Viridian Forest isn't much fun alone."

"Sure, if you want," Katie agreed. Trainers in stories invariably met up with people on the road and traveled with them. It always worked to their advantage. "That'd be fun."

Ben crossed his arms. "I seriously doubt there's anything in that forest you need to worry about," he said dryly, glancing at all the badges on Seth's jacket, which was still draped over Katie's lap.

Seth smiled disarmingly at him. "Maybe I just want some company," he said, and Ben frowned. "It's just for a few days. Is there some reason you don't want anyone with you?"

Ben flinched and stared hard at Seth, who continued to smile pleasantly. Finally Ben broke eye contact and dropped into an armchair next to Katie, turning deliberately away from Seth. "Do what you want," he said coldly. "We'll leave in a few days."

"Katie Sakura!" Nurse Joy's voice carried over the babble of conversation. "Your pokemon are back to full health. Please come and pick them up at the counter."

Katie took hold of her injured leg, preparing to move it off its cushion, but Ben shook his head and stood up. "I'll get him. Don't move that ice."

He disappeared into the crowd, and Katie handed Seth's jacket back to him. "Did you talk to Dad much, when you fought him?"

"I'll tell you the whole thing if you want, once we're in the forest," Seth answered, running a hand through his orange bristles and yawning. "We'll get bored fast, just walking. My sister's half of the fight was more exciting."

"You fought together?" Katie asked, but Ben was making his way back over to them, and he pushed past Seth to get to her. "You never said you'd caught it," he said accusingly, dropping the two pokeballs into her hand.

"It really was an accident," she answered, holding the spearow's pokeball up to the light. "I'm not even sure I want to keep it. I don't like the thought of even taking it out, much less battling with it."

Ben took the pokeball from her and without so much as a warning pointed it at the ground and popped it open. A flash of light later, the spearow had materialized on the floor of the pokemon center. It jerked its head left and right, watching other trainers' movements intently.

Ben knelt to look it in the face matter-of-factly. "You hurt my sister, huh?" he asked, and the bird fixed its beady eyes on him. "You'll learn soon enough, but she's really the last person you'll want to get mad at once you give her a chance."

He quickly recalled the spearow before it could slash his face and returned the pokeball to Katie. "You'll have your work cut out, but I think it'll be worth it." He stared thoughtfully at the pokeball. "I wonder why she _was_ alone. Spearow do usually travel in packs."

"It's a she, then?" Katie asked him. She looked down at the ball in her hand. _Alone…_

"Um, okay, then," she told it, feeling a little foolish and wondering if the pokemon could hear her. "I think your name's going to be Charon, all right? Just so I'll have something to call you besides spearow."

"Okay," said Seth, hanging over the back of her chair to stare at the pokeball too. "What's charon?"

"Pluto's moon," Katie mumbled, going a little red. "Its only one."

Ben stood up abruptly. "I'm going to get us some lunch," he said to Katie. "Wait here." He walked off again.

"Like I could do anything else," Katie said with a sigh, attaching her pokeballs to her belt with some difficulty.

"I'm guessing he's not going to bring me any," Seth said dryly. "Be right back."

Katie took a sip of her now-lukewarm tea and glanced halfheartedly at the television, which was playing the news. She wondered if she would ever have as many badges as Seth did, and how long it had taken him to get them all. Would she ever face her father in battle? She couldn't imagine it, and she was glad, for probably the first time in her life, that he lived in Hoenn. She felt her eyes closing again, and hoped Ben would wake her up for lunch.

"In other news, no headway has been made in the search for Shannon Leigh, who was reported missing by her family three days ago after she failed to return home from a shopping trip in Saffron City," the news anchor said, her face solemn. "Sixteen-year-old Leigh was a native of Lavender Town, and had gained considerable fame throughout Kanto as a pokemon trainer. Whether this disappearance is in any way connected with that of Celadon City's Samuel Current, another well-known trainer, has yet to be determined."

…

A/N: A couple of things.

First off, I know a lot that when a lot of people describe the tail whip attack, they make it an actual attack—the pokemon goes up and whacks its opponent with its tail. We just decided we'd make it what it is in the game as best we could, and felt like the pokemon would probably notice its defense being lowered, which is why it made Raptor sick. Also, before someone asks how Katie would know about Pluto, we also decided that we're going to treat the world of pokemon as some kind of alternate earth, since there are humans running around and it has a yellow sun, one moon, etc, and since as far as we know there's no answer to the question of what planet they're on anyway. If someone does know somehow, tell us. We're curious. Oh, and the fried chicken…we're also just going to assume that there are, um, other animals besides pokemon on this planet, since we get a little squeamish at the thought of eating a pidgey and then going out and training one. I know people keep pet pigs and things, but…hopefully it's not that big an issue. (grins)


	3. Probably it's a game

A/N:

Anica106: Too long, I know. (dodges flying objects) I apologize to those of you who are actually following this story. Life gets in the way. Particularly if you're a college student. Anyway, though, chapter three's finally up, so enjoy!

Disclaimer: We don't own Pokemon. We promise.

Chapter 3

Probably it's a game

It had been a long time since Ben had been through Viridian Forest. The first time had been about two weeks after he'd become a trainer, and he remembered how nervous and jumpy he'd been inside the endless maze of dark, sinister trees, keenly aware for the first time since the start of his journey of just how alone he was.

Now, after having crossed the forest several more times, he realized his initial panic had been rather silly. Yes, Viridian Forest was large and winding, and you might get lost if you didn't know where you were going, but as natural obstacles went...The towering trees around them threw patches of shadow over the ground, but plenty of late afternoon sunlight still filtered down through their branches, and Ben felt himself enjoying the pleasant, shady walk down the forking dirt paths.

He stretched as he walked, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure the other two were still within sight. He'd quickened his pace earlier that morning, preferring not to be the object of Seth's seemingly inexhaustible desire for conversation, and was consequently several feet ahead. He still couldn't help hearing, however: the forest was quiet apart from themselves, and Seth's voice was rather piercing.

Sure enough, when he looked back at them Seth was finishing up a highly colored account of yet another gym battle, this one involving his own skarmory and his sister's vileplume. Katie had been listening eagerly for the past two days, and would occasionally ask him a question about a type advantage or an attack's effect, which he would answer with the air of a mountain guru educating a disciple.

Ben rolled his eyes and swerved to avoid stepping on a caterpie clinging to a tree root. If nothing else, the walk through the forest was bringing them closer to Pewter, where they could hopefully get rid of the other boy. It had been difficult even to get a moment alone to talk to Professor Oak during the time when they were waiting for Katie's ankle to heal.

Ben flinched guiltily and gave his sister another quick look over his shoulder. Most of her bandages had come off and she no longer had any trouble walking, but a few bruises were still visible on her arms, and her hands and face still sported scratches that Nurse Joy had assured her would most likely fade with time.

He still vividly remembered feeling the bottom drop out of his stomach when he'd entered the pokemon center to see her covered in bruises and dressings, her leg swollen and stretched out on a footrest. He'd been so terribly _sure_ she'd been attacked by their unknown enemy, that she'd had to fight alone with her low-level bulbasaur because he hadn't been there. He couldn't believe, even now, that he'd been stupid enough to let her go wandering around alone after Lance had warned him that she might be a target.

A cruel voice in the back of his head whispered that she _would_ have been more careful if she'd known there was anything to be careful about. Professor Oak had asked during their first phone conversation if he had told her yet about Sabrina's vision. He had received a sharp reply and had not mentioned it since, except to hint after the incident with the spearow at what Ben already knew: that every minute she didn't know what was facing her was a minute she didn't know to be on her guard.

He pushed those thoughts away. Knowing would only frighten her at this point, and he obviously couldn't tell her now anyway, with Seth around. _He_ would simply have to be more watchful from now on.

As if on cue, he heard movement in the trees ahead of him and halted, instantly alert, his head jerking up sharply to scan the tree line. The rustling continued. He heard the approaching footsteps of the other two and automatically held out a warning hand. They reached him and stopped, obviously uncertain.

"What is it?" Katie whispered, peering over his shoulder to get a better look. "Is it a pokemon?"

"No way," Seth answered from his other side. Ben privately agreed. Nothing that lived in this forest was big enough to make that much noise. He reached instinctively for his pokeballs, hesitating at the last minute. _Don't battle if you can help it. Keep your head down._

Ben tilted his head toward Seth, who had stepped up to stand beside him. "Are you any good?" he said in a low voice.

Seth raised his eyebrows. "Have you not been listening at all?" he asked incredulously, crossing his arms and not bothering to keep his voice down. "I _have_ fifteen—"

"That's not what I asked," Ben interrupted. "Can _you_ fight, or does your sister do all the work?"

"What the hell is your--" Seth began angrily, but Katie suddenly gave a little gasp and pointed to the tree line. Ben jerked his head back around just in time to see a boy step out of the trees and onto the path, stopping as he reached them and shielding his eyes from the sun. He looked to be ten or eleven, and as they watched him he hoisted the large, floppy net he was carrying from one shoulder to the other.

"You guys trainers?" he asked in a high, rather nasal voice, wiping his forehead with his free hand and leaving a streak of dirt across his face. "Someone wanna battle?"

The tension left Ben's body in a rush, and he put the pokeball he'd grabbed back onto his belt, slightly annoyed that he'd panicked for no reason. There were always amateur trainers crawling around Viridian Forest looking for bug pokemon. Ben guessed this boy had only been training for a few days at most; young trainers were often so eager to battle that they didn't stop to think about their opponent's age before they made a challenge.

Then there were those who would take advantage of that, Ben thought, his irritation deepening as Seth smirked and shoved past him to stand opposite the boy. Without preamble, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pokeball, grinning over his shoulder as he tossed it a few feet in front of him. It opened with a flash and a dull green pokemon Ben had never seen before appeared, cocking its lizard-like head as it regarded its opponent with tiny black eyes. The boy trainer stared back, then looked up at Seth, obviously a little taken aback.

"Oh," Katie said softly at Ben's elbow. "That's his kecleon. He showed me in his pokedex. That was his starting one, him and his sister both."

Ben reached out and grasped Seth's arm. "Why don't we let Katie battle?" he asked pointedly as Seth turned and scowled at him. Behind him, Katie jerked and looked at him in alarm. He smiled encouragingly at her. "She should probably find out how trainer battles work before we get to Pewter."

Seth shrugged and recalled his pokemon. "Whatever," he said indifferently, turning and making his way off the dirt path to sit down on a tree trunk. He stretched and rested his chin on his fist, grinning at the other two. Ben rolled his eyes and turned back the young trainer.

"That's okay, right?" he asked. "My sister's never battled before."

The boy nodded forcefully, looking immensely relieved. "I'm Doug," he informed them, setting his net down and stuffing his hands into his pockets as he gave Katie an appraising look. "Started last weekend. I already have a bunch of pokemon, though."

"Oh," Katie answered, looking a little startled. "Well…I only have two so far, is that okay? I'm Katie," she added as she stepped forward nervously. Ben backed up to give them more room and wound up standing next to Seth. Doug, looking more confident, stooped down to reach into his net and drew out a pokeball.

"No problem," he answered, straightening up and grinning at her. "We'll do your two against two of mine. Go!" he yelled suddenly, and hurled his pokeball at the ground between them. It burst open to reveal a weedle, who drew itself up to stare curiously around at them all.

Ben relaxed. This was nothing, especially since Katie had a flying type. He slid his backpack off his shoulders and settled himself cross-legged on the ground, watching Katie reach for a pokeball. Beside him, Seth had opened his own backpack and was eating some sort of fruit bar as he watched the battle unconcernedly.

"Go," Katie called rather timidly, tossing her pokeball toward the weedle. Ben grinned into his lap; he'd have to let her know that despite what she'd seen in movies, trainers weren't obligated to yell dramatically at their pokemon. His smile faded as Raptor materialized on the grass, staring around at the trees and scuffling his feet. He frowned slightly at Katie, who determinedly ignored him as she clenched her fists nervously.

"Spike! Use poison sting!" Doug commanded loudly, and the weedle sped across the ground and rammed headfirst into Raptor's leg. He bounced off at once and lurched back, apparently struggling not to tip over backward. Raptor gave Spike a somewhat withering look and didn't so much slam into him as step on him when Katie ordered a tackle attack, making Seth laugh and causing Ben to wonder if Spike had ever even been in a battle before.

"Fine!" Doug called irritably after two more tackles and a vine whip. "Spike! Return!"

The exhausted weedle disappeared into his pokeball, and Doug shoved his hand into his net and pulled out another one, flinging it to the ground with even more force than before. "Go! Caterpie!"

"Raptor, hit it with another vine whip," Katie called, but stopped as Doug waved his arms in outrage.

"No way!" he yelled. "You have to use your other one! Two against two, remember? You can only use him for one battle!"

Seth rolled his eyes. "That doesn't matt—" he began, but Ben elbowed him and hissed, "She needs to fight with her spearow" and he broke off, looking grumpy.

Katie glanced over at Ben, looking a little frightened, but at a nod from him swallowed and withdrew Raptor. She reached into her bag and drew out her other pokeball, biting her lip and hesitating. Only after an impatient gesture from Doug did she carefully throw the ball into the battle field, where it burst open in a flash of light. Charon shot into the air immediately, jerking her head around at them all and looking furious.

Doug, looking as though he couldn't believe his bad luck, glared at Katie and yelled, "Caterpie! Hit it with a string shot!"

The small pokemon took a deep breath and blew a steady stream of webbing into the air in Charon's direction. Charon, who had been eyeing Katie maliciously, was caught by surprise and squawked in protest as the sticky string hit her from behind, coating her back and wings with white goop. She flapped her wings wildly to keep her balance as she whirled around and shrieked abuse at the caterpie, who watched her warily from the ground.

Katie, obviously feeling that she ought to regain some semblance of control, but just as obviously reluctant to draw the spearow's attention back to her, licked her lips nervously and called, "Charon…try a peck attack."

Charon ignored this completely, and Ben couldn't really blame her: The spearow's violent struggle to stay airborne was causing the gooey strings that covered her back to become tangled worse and worse in her wings and tail feathers, and it was obvious to Ben that she would have to land soon or risk falling. She thrashed about for a few more moments before she finally gave in and came down to rest a few feet away from Katie, hissing softly and glaring daggers at the caterpie.

Doug pumped his fist triumphantly. "Yes! Get it, Caterpie! Tackle!"

The caterpie hesitated and gave his trainer a pleading look. It was obvious that he was reluctant to approach Charon even if she couldn't fly. Doug, looking extremely put out, shouted, "Come on! We can win, okay? Just…just go smack it!"

The caterpie didn't move. Seth shrugged at Ben. "I wouldn't do it either, and I'm about ten times that thing's size." Ben, staring into Charon's murderous black eyes, almost agreed.

All this time Katie had been hovering anxiously a few feet away from her crippled spearow, apparently unsure what to do. She looked over at Doug and opened her mouth as if to speak, but a soft tearing sound drew all of their attention back to the ground. Charon, who had been working her shoulders furiously during Doug's conversation with his caterpie, seemed to have finally made some progress. The string shot tangled in her wings had almost completely dried, and with repeated effort she was managing to slowly detach her wings from her sides.

"Get it now!" Doug shrieked as, with two sharp ripping noises, Charon's wings came loose. "Come _on_! Before it starts flying ag—!"

Charon shot into the air and hovered ten feet off the ground, bits of dried string hanging from her furiously flapping wings. Katie, shielding her eyes and looking rather fearfully up at her pokemon, called softly, "…Charon?...Um, pe—"

"Return it," Ben said sharply to Doug as Charon dived, talons outstretched, toward Caterpie (Katie threw her hands over her head in fright). Doug, however, was watching Charon with his mouth slightly open, seemingly frozen. Ben winced involuntarily as he envisioned the damage Charon's claws would do to the bug pokemon's soft flesh, and Katie clapped her hands to her mouth, evidently horrorstruck. Charon, however, flared her wings as she neared the ground and grasped the quivering caterpie with her outstretched talons. Doug, who had snapped out of his trance and was fumbling for his pokeball, yelped in surprise as Charon lifted the smaller pokemon off the ground and struggled upward again, flapping her wings rapidly and making for the tree line to their right.

"Wh—hey!" Doug yelled, outraged. "You stupid—call it back!" he demanded furiously, whirling to face a completely bewildered Katie. "It's gonna—it's gonna eat him or something!"

Katie jerked and grabbed her pokeball. She took off at a run, Doug at her heels, trying desperately to head Charon off as she flew around the clearing with her squirming passenger. Ben, watching the mad pursuit of the spearow with a kind of helpless amazement and starting to feel a painful throb behind his eyes, sighed and leaned back to lie down in the grass, throwing his arms out beside him. Seth, who was sitting on the tree trunk wearing a similar expression of resignation, popped the last of his snack bar into his mouth and offered another one to Ben, who took it without much grace and unwrapped it, realizing as he did how hungry he was. He took a bite as he continued to watch Charon dodge the jets of red light being fired by Doug ("Dammit! Hang on, Caterpie!") and Katie ("Charon—please! Charon, just put it down!"). It was quite sweet, and he vaguely remembered tasting something like it somewhere before.

Seth turned back around and rested his chin in his hands, and Ben closed his eyes without really meaning to. The sweet smell of summer grass was all around him, and he was faintly aware, as he fought halfheartedly to stay awake, of the familiar feeling of earth underneath his back. His hand twitched slightly as though searching—but there was nothing there, and although it was warm he shivered faintly as the world around him faded into nothingness.

…

"_Wow! How cool! How cool!" Tyler yelled, bouncing up and down in his seat as the Gym Leader's magnemite sent shock waves flying at its opponent's ponyta. He turned around and grinned at the two girls sitting behind him, barely containing his excitement. "Come on! Don't you think it's awesome? I wish I could do that!"_

_Katie grinned back. "Battle pokemon or shoot lightning?"_

"_Both!" Tyler said happily, beaming at the battle arena, where the magnemite was now trying to dodge a fire spin. "But battling must be so much fun, like with the fire and the electrics and the ice—"_

"_Oh, shut up," Vicky snapped, looking up from her textbook to glare at him. "Quit being so loud. Have you even got all your work done?"_

_Tyler stuck his tongue out at her and turned back to Katie. "But like superheroes, you know? Trainers are like superheroes! Maybe after school I can be one too, right? Do you think?"_

"_Yes, definitely," Katie agreed, giggling at his enthusiasm. "I think you'd make a great trainer. You should do it if you still want to."_

"_And you can come too and we'll go everywhere and have adventures and cool stuff like that! Like on TV!"_

"_Well, I don't know about that," Katie said with a nervous laugh. "I think I'd rather just watch you. I'd be your biggest fan." _

"_Aww," Tyler said. "But I'll get lonely. And I'm sure not gonna take Vicky," he added, glaring at the other girl. _

"_Like I'd want to come," Vicky said irritably, squinting at the page of her book. "It's stupid anyway. Trainers that old are just overgrown children who don't want to admit they're adults. And then when they finally wake up they realize they don't know how to do anything else. "_

_Seeing Tyler's crestfallen expression, Katie said quickly, "I—don't think that's how it is…there are…my dad, he—"_

"_My point is that Tyler ought to be glad he's actually going to do something worthwhile with his life instead of just running around playing," Vicky snapped. "Trainers don't give anything back to society; they don't accomplish anything, they just selfishly—oh for God's SAKE!" she yelled, dropping her pencil and clapping her hands to her ears as the magnemite let out a screech attack that halted the ponyta in its tracks. _

"_I'm going back to the dorm," she yelled over the noise, shutting her book and stuffing it violently into her bag. "You two can keep wasting your time. We have a chemistry test tomorrow, you know." She climbed awkwardly off the bleachers, still wincing even though the screech attack had faded. _

_Tyler made a face at her as she left the gym and turned to Katie. "It's okay, I've already studied. I can help you tonight if you want," he said, misinterpreting the troubled look on her face. "You know, I don't think she's right though. I think having fun's worthwhile too."_

_There was another flash of fire, and the magnemite shuddered and dropped like a stone. The Leader recalled it before it hit the ground, and the challenging trainer grinned in an almost predatory way, his eyes glinting with excitement. _

_As if he'd accomplished something._

…

Katie stared into the remains of the fire, her chin resting in the crook of her elbow. It was a warm night, and Seth hadn't bothered to ensure that the fire would last. Ben had fallen asleep shortly after dinner and hadn't stirred since, and Katie had followed suit, with the reasoning that the sooner she fell asleep the sooner it would be morning, and the sooner they could leave Viridian Forest. Ben had estimated that they would reach the forest's edge within the next couple of days, and Katie was eager to see civilization again.

It had been frustrating, therefore, to discover that she was somehow completely unable to sleep, no matter how comfortable she made herself. She couldn't understand why. There was little noise to distract her (neither of the boys snored, and the chirping of the bugs had seeped into her brain over the past few days so that she barely noticed it anymore) and it wasn't as if she had anything particularly upsetting to think about. Her body simply did not seem to want to shut down for the night, and so she'd been turning restless circles in her sleeping bag for the past hour and a half, feeling troubled and dispirited without really knowing why.

She supposed it had something to do with her poor performance in her first trainer battle. She'd been too frantic at the time to register embarrassment, but now her cheeks reddened when she thought of herself chasing her own pokemon around in circles trying desperately to return her to her pokeball. She had, after some time, managed to catch Charon in one of the jets of red light she'd been randomly firing from the ground, after which they'd all endured five or six seconds of horror as they'd watched Doug's caterpie plummet toward the forest floor. Fortunately, Seth had pulled off a spectacular catch that he'd been crowing about ever since, and the affair had ended with no real injury to anyone, unless you counted pride.

Katie felt guilty about not being able to apologize to Doug; mute fury had made him deaf to her stammered attempts, and after the fiasco had ended he'd snatched his pokemon out of Seth's arms and fled back into the trees without a word to any of them. Seth openly found the entire thing hilarious; he'd been teasing Katie and making jokes at Doug's expense over the past four days, trying to get her to laugh too. Ben, who knew her better, had refrained from mentioning it at all, except to point out as they made camp that night that Katie had clearly won the first fight against the weedle.

Katie knew this, and besides, they'd met more trainers wandering around in the forest since that day and she'd won several of those battles. It was just that she probably would have won more of them if Charon hadn't consistently tried to attack the trainers, or go after some random wild pokemon instead of her opponent, or fly off out of the battle arena, whenever she was let out of her pokeball. Ben still encouraged her to fight with Charon often (to which she generally pointed out that whenever she did so the boys would discreetly retreat into the tree line), but it was to the point now where using Charon basically meant an automatic forfeit, and Katie couldn't help being a bit discouraged.

She harbored immense gratitude toward Raptor. Trainers in books and movies invariably had one pokemon that they couldn't control in battle, but none of the stories had managed to convey how really embarrassing that was. Besides, Katie thought glumly, you always knew in movies that the trainer would eventually win the pokemon over with how good he was or how much he cared about it or something else like that. She wondered about herself.

_I think having fun's worthwhile, too…_

She closed her eyes.

_Flash._

--And they flew open, her pupils dilating just in time to register the last of the brilliant white light that had seared through her eyelids. It faded completely, and the moon and stars and campfire embers came slowly back into existence.

Katie lay very still for a moment, then moved her gaze slowly over toward the other two sleeping bags. Ben lay on his stomach, clearly still sleeping, and although Seth had his back to her his hair was visible from under his blanket and she doubted he was awake either. She waited nervously.

_Flash._

This time she sat bolt upright, gripping her sleeping bag painfully hard as the light steadily intensified and receded, as if taking in a deep, terrible breath and slowly releasing it. Katie gasped for breath as the light left, looking around desperately through her temporary blindness for a possible cause, becoming aware of how suddenly, completely silent the forest was. The boys didn't stir and she was struck with the sudden certainty that they wouldn't, that this was some sort of private nightmare just for her.

_Flash._

She jerked to her feet, stumbling as her sleeping bag shifted under her, and staggered a few paces away from the dying fire, her hands over her face, her breath harsh and uneven. She didn't even think about the pokemon on her belt; there was no room in her head for thinking. There was only the heartbeat of the light, and an overpowering desire to move, to not be still, to escape it. She lurched into the trees, eyes shut desperately, throwing a hand out for balance.

_Flash._

She whimpered and ran, reeling as if drunk, eyes half-open to see, sticks cutting painfully into her bare feet. Her hair caught on a low branch; she struggled frantically and felt several strands tear loose. She stumbled on, not caring where she went, clutching her head in agony—the light was in her, inside her brain, it was surely driving her mad—

_Flash._

She moaned this time as the light reached its awful climax; overwhelmed, unable to go any farther, she fell to her hands and knees, keening and gasping for air. _I'm going to die_, she thought giddily, _and I'm not even that far from home, I didn't need to be so scared of leaving after all—_laughter bubbled up out of her mouth—

Nothing. Silence. Darkness.

Her eyes opened automatically, before she could resist.

Nothing. Silence. Darkness.

No, not quite darkness—she tensed in fear, but this wasn't the same, the light was—restrained, muted. Her vision cleared as she lifted her head slightly, still trembling. She had come upon a clearing, similar to the one she and the others had made camp in, only much larger. The trees rose up on all sides, making the place vaguely circular, and the stars shone down on the warm grass, giving it a strange, surreal glow.

Katie raised her eyes further, and they widened in shock as she suddenly understood what had been happening. In the middle of the clearing, perfectly still and silent, were—she tried to count—tens, dozens of pikachu, standing so close to each other that they seemed to form one huge, unified creature. It—they—were glowing softly, serenely, as if waiting to see what would happen next. A hundred little black eyes watched her, unblinking.

Katie rose shakily, still quite frightened. The silence felt unnatural, as though it was a result of the suppression of sound rather than its absence, and something about the calm, knowing gazes of the pikachu unsettled her. She felt she was in the presence of something immense and alien, something much older than herself. She half-imagined that she could see herself reflected in the blank black pools of their eyes, and realized that they could destroy her, they could crush her again with the light—her breath caught in her throat and she took a step backward—

Her back collided with something warm, and a pair of hands gripped her shoulders. A tremor ran through her body as she looked up into a pair of dark blue eyes—

"It's dangerous to walk around alone at night," Seth said, and Katie registered the words as if from a great distance. "You never know who else might be here."

Katie stared at him, and the world came back into focus. She blinked and looked quickly back into the clearing. The spell seemed broken; the pikachu were no longer watching her and some had started to wander back into the trees. She was suddenly aware that she could hear the bugs again. She looked back up at Seth and started to shiver uncontrollably.

"Let's go back," she said faintly, thinking of Ben and warmth. Seth tightened his hold on her.

"They do that sometimes," he said, tilting his head toward the clearing. "No one really knows why. It's nothing to be scared of though," he added, grinning down at her. His teeth flashed white in the darkness. "I read somewhere that probably it's a game for them."

Katie stared at him. She couldn't think how to respond to this, except to know with absolute certainty that it was not true. The silence lengthened between them.

"Hey," Seth said brightly after a moment. "Watch this." He released her suddenly and she stumbled, not realizing until then how strong his grip had been. She backed away slightly as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a black-and-yellow pokeball. He watched her do so, a slightly amused smile on his face. "They're nothing to be that scared of," he repeated. "They're weak, see? Watch." He tossed the ultraball carelessly at one of the pikachu that remained in the clearing. It disappeared in a flash of light. Katie flinched.

Seth walked over and picked up the still-quivering ball. "It can't break out," he assured Katie, who was watching uneasily. "It's low-level. The ultraball's too strong for it." Sure enough, a second later the ball stopped shaking and Seth tossed it into the air and caught it, turning to Katie with a satisfied expression. He held out his hand toward her.

"Here," he said, with the same disarming, fleeting smile he'd used when they had met. "Girls like pikachu, right?"

Katie stared at the ultraball, vaguely unsettled. She looked up at Seth. "I…don't…I'd rather…" She cast her mind around, trying to come up with a convincing reason not to accept the little black ball. There wasn't one, really…just a general feeling of _wrongness_ about the situation, about the entire night. "I…thanks, but I…I think I'd rather catch my own," she invented, not meeting his eyes.

Seth didn't move for a few seconds, his gaze fixed on her. Then, looking faintly put out, he popped open the ultraball and the pikachu reappeared on the ground. "Get out of here," he muttered, nudging it with his foot. The pokemon looked at him for a moment, then scampered off into the tall grass and out of sight. Seth returned the ball to his jacket pocket.

Katie chanced a look back up at Seth; he was smiling warmly again. "We'd better get back. Your brother'll freak out if he wakes up and you're not there. And somehow it would've been my fault, too, so I came after you."

Katie smiled a little, but somehow it wasn't that funny. She looked instinctively back into the clearing, where she could still see a few pikachu slinking through the grass. One of them turned to look at her.

The chirping of bugs was deafening. She turned around and allowed Seth to lead her back into the night.

…

A/N:

shadowsquirl: AAAARRRGGHH. I can't stand it! I can't wait till the plot really starts up! Right now my sister's ideas are all we're using. However, we will eventually start using some of mine. I work with villains. We've pretty much worked the story out, but we're pacing slowly.

Good? Bad? Let us know. See you in Pewter. (grins)


	4. Storm clouds

A/N: I don't really have an excuse for the late update, other than life getting in the way. Enjoy. :)

Chapter 4: Storm clouds

"Charon! Leer!"

Charon fluttered upward, narrowly dodging a headbutt attack, and hovered in midair, fixing the other pokemon with a malevolent stare. The girafarig shuddered slightly.

Katie hoped she had obeyed on purpose and not simply because she felt like it. "OK, now fury attack! Try for his face!" she added anxiously. Raptor had been felled by a single attack in which the weird pokemon's eyes had glowed an eerie blue; she hoped to avoid a repeat.

Charon shrieked and dove at the girafarig, flaring her wings to hover level with his head. Instead of performing the ordered attack, however, she thrust her feet forward and latched on to the girafarig's eyes with her claws, bringing her beak up to tear at the base of his small horns. The girafarig grunted in surprise and shook his head, trying to throw her off.

_OK, we got "try for its face," _Katie thought with grim good humor. Hopefully with his eyes closed against Charon's assault, the girafarig wouldn't be able to use the glowing attack. Only when the opposing trainer, a black-haired boy around Katie's age, called, "Confusion, girafarig!" and the pokemon swung its tail around did she realize her mistake. The markings on the girafarig's tail, which Katie had thought only looked like eyes and a mouth, were slowly moving—the mouth split into a grin as the small eyes glowed blue.

Charon shuddered and froze, then squawked in pain as her body was forced away from her opponent, wings and legs stretched out painfully in midair. There were several small popping sounds, and when the attack ended Charon fell to the ground. Katie quickly recalled her.

"Thanks," she said, handing the other boy some money and grinning a little sheepishly. "That was a total loss. He's impressive," she added, gesturing toward the girafarig, who had cantered back to his trainer. "I've never seen anything like that…um, on his tail."

"Guess so," the boy answered, reaching out to stroke his pokemon's muzzle. "I got him at the Lake of Rage about a month ago. We're trying to work on his reflexes. For some reason his tail responds slower than it should to orders from the big brain. " Now that Katie looked at him, she noticed that one of the girafarig's tail-eyes seemed to droop slightly.

The good tail-eye winked at her. She looked away quickly and started to jog back to Ben and Seth.

o

"I don't see why we can't just go now," Seth insisted, jiggling his leg eagerly.

"You can go whenever you want," Ben answered with a shrug. "It's about to storm, though. The museum's on the other side of town; you'll get caught in it even if you run. And storms can get bad here." He and Seth were sitting across from each other in the comfortable red armchairs of the Pewter City pokemon center.

Katie, waiting on her pokemon to be healed, was standing at the center's large front window, watching the sky. The hot July air had turned heavy as they'd reached the city, and the three of them had been sweating heavily by the time they'd reached the pokemon center. There was an odd feeling in the air, as though it was holding its breath. Ben had said that was the storm. "I think he's right," Katie told Seth. "There's lightning in the clouds already. I wouldn't really want to go out in this."

"Overruled," Ben said smugly to Seth, settling back in his chair.

"Rain, who cares?" Seth said impatiently, but made no move to leave. Katie smiled as she turned back to the window. Even though Seth was three years older and complaints notwithstanding, it seemed he had begun to accept Ben as the group's unofficial leader. And despite his earlier reluctance to let Seth travel with them, Ben seemed to have accepted that the older boy wasn't going anywhere at least for now, and had started making guarded attempts to look after him as well as Katie. She appreciated the change; before, the air between the two of them had more resembled the storm clouds outside.

"What's going on over there anyway?" Ben was asking. "Didn't your sister say it was something pretty special? An exhibit or something?"

"I don't know exactly," Seth answered. "She said it was about fossils, but I don't think it's just an exhibit, since they do fossil exhibits all the time. Something about research and development. She apparently got herself a little paid work helping out one of the scientists."

"Research and development?" Ben frowned. "Research I get, but development with fossils? Developing what?"

"I don't know, it's just what she said," Seth shrugged. "She was pretty busy last time I called so I didn't hear much. Anyway, if we can't find her there, maybe the gym leader here knows something. He's a fossil guy himself."

At the mention of the city's gym, Katie started and looked around. When she saw they were both looking at her, she turned back quickly toward the window, red-faced. She missed the knowing grin the two boys shared behind her back.

"So I hope she doesn't totally blow the gym fight, because I've got a lot of money riding on it. It's really important to me that she does it totally perfect the first time," Seth said loudly.

"Yeah, especially since she can't EVER try again if she loses," Ben said just as loudly. "I mean, even though it says in the rulebook you can try as many times as you want. And you get this big stamp on your forehead that says 'I lost at the Pewter Gym and I'm a failure as a trainer' and it never comes off and everybody laughs at you forever."

"Yeah, usually people with really big foreheads are the ones who lose," Seth said as Katie turned around. "Shut up, both of you," she said, secretly gratified by their attempt to cheer her up. "Like I'm going to go fight a gym leader for the first time and not be nervous."

"You can be nervous," Ben assured her. "Just don't think it's the end of the world if you lose, because it isn't."

"They kind of expect you to lose the first time actually," Seth put in. "The first gym leader I fought—she was a fire-type trainer—took out my pokemon with one attack and just laughed and told me to come back whenever I wanted. It's not a big deal." He and Katie looked expectantly at Ben.

He cleared his throat. "I won my first challenge, actually."

Seth rolled his eyes. "Okay, now I'm going to actually be helpful," he interrupted. "Seeing my gym leader's torkoal in action convinced me I wanted one myself. I trained it up and used it during the rematch and it was a pretty awesome win. So even if you lose, doesn't mean you can't completely change things the next time around."

"And he didn't let me finish," Ben said. "I was going to say, just go have fun with it, because the gym leaders do. My first gym leader danced around throwing flower petals in these really complex patterns the whole time we fought. She was just showing off for the fun of it."

"Thanks," Katie said with a half-smile. "I hope Brock's idea of fun isn't throwing rocks at me." She looked at Ben and Seth's suddenly neutral expressions. "It isn't, is it?"

"Brock can get a little…over-excited," Ben said. "Just…stay on your side of the field and it shouldn't be a problem."

"You're good at dodging anyway," Seth said encouragingly. "That bird of yours hardly ever lands a hit anymore."

Katie threw a cushion at him as, outside, the clouds opened and the rain began to fall.

o

"Erika," Lance said incredulously, "what you're telling me has massive implications. You're saying one of Celadon's own institutions is possibly connected to organized crime? Just how long has this been going on?"

The petite, kimono-clad woman on his vidscreen brought her fan up to cover her mouth, a sign of shame. "I apologize for my failure to put a stop to this. I do not habitually visit the Game Corner, nor do any of my trainers. In point of fact, most of…"

"Most of the Game Corner's patrons are men, and only women are allowed to be trainers at your gym," Lance finished tiredly.

"By the time the rumors reached me—through my gym's announcer, who is himself not allowed inside the building—things had come this far," Erika confirmed.

"All right. Listen, it goes without saying, but make sure they're really smuggling pokemon before you do anything openly. Rumors are rumors. And be careful. If it is some kind of organized crime, they probably have some strong humans and pokemon to defend their operation with." He glanced at his keypad and noticed the "call waiting" light flashing. "And of course, make sure the people you're coordinating the investigation with can be trusted."

Erika bowed. "Understood. I shall contact you again as I obtain further information."

"Don't be reckless," Lance said just as the vidscreen went dark. It probably didn't matter. Erika had never done anything reckless as long as he'd known her. In fact, he thought exasperatedly, she'd probably known of these rumors about the Game Corner for longer than she'd let on, and given the decision to inform him about them much time and reflection.

It wasn't just the possibility of a smuggling ring set up in the middle of Celadon that was making him worry, though that was disturbing enough. He was also looking for any possible connection to Sabrina's prediction. It had been maddeningly vague, so he wasn't even sure what he was supposed to be looking for, but organized crime seemed a promising start. He felt nervous about telling Erika to investigate something that was potentially so dangerous, but had no proof that his worries were founded. Whatever was going on in Celadon had to be looked into one way or another.

Grinding his teeth—he hated being in the dark—he pushed the "call waiting" button on his vidphone, expecting Professor Oak—Ben and his sister were supposed to have made it to Pewter by now. Instead, he was surprised to see the face of his friend Garrett Davison, who had gone to the Vermillion University with Lance, and who now (if Lance remembered correctly) worked as a scientist at the Pewter Museum. "Garrett? This is a surprise. How are you doing?"

"Lance," Garrett replied, his voice tense. "I'm glad…I'm glad I got through to you."

"Sure," Lance replied. "Is something wrong? You don't look too good."

This was an understatement. Garrett's lab coat hung off a frame that looked as though it had lost a lot of weight in a short time, and there were dark circles under the man's eyes.

"Yes—I mean, no, nothing's wrong. I meant that yes, I'm not feeling well. Not yes, something's wrong. I don't want to alarm you for no reason." He laughed, a little too loudly.

"…Well," Lance said when the silence had spiraled for a while. "What can I do for you, Garrett?"

"I was—Lance, I was hoping you—you might come to see me so I can talk to you about something," Garrett finished in a rush. He looked behind him, as if afraid someone might have heard.

"A visit?" Lance answered, still thinking about the situation in Celadon. "Garrett, I'm pretty busy, I just got some bad news and I'm not sure I'll be able to make it to Pewter for a while. Is it something you can ask me about over the…hey, are you okay?"

With each word, Garrett's hopeful smile had sagged, until now he looked like he might cry. "I'm—I'm—" A young redheaded woman came into view behind the scientist, her eyes widening slightly when she saw who he was talking to.

"Professor Davison," she broke in, touching Garrett's shoulder. At the touch, Garrett jerked as if he'd been burned. "Professor Lowell wants your help out front." The woman looked at Lance with striking blue eyes before turning back to Garrett with a smile. "I had no idea you knew a member of the Elite Four."

Garrett looked back and forth between the redheaded woman and Lance. "I—I—yes. After I finish my phone call. Tell Lowell I'll be there shortly, after I—we need to arrange Lance's visit." Garrett spoke these last words more confidently, raising his eyes to look directly at the young woman.

She smiled broadly. "Oh, my. The champion is coming here? That'll be a treat. We poor girls won't know what to do with ourselves." She laughed like a young girl before looking back at Lance, still grinning. "You must know this since you're friends, but Professor Davison has a wife and a little girl that I'm sure will love to see you."

"Wait!" Garrett broke in suddenly. "No, he—when I said visit—I'm afraid he…he won't be able to make it after all. He's just told me he's busy with things there." His voice broke. "So please...I mean, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell my…my wife or daughter that he'll be coming. They'd be disappointed."

The woman let go of his arm. "Of course not, Professor. I'll go tell Professor Lowell you'll be a moment. I'm sure you two have a lot to talk about together."

"No," Garrett said. His tenseness had gone, and now he seemed deflated. "I just wanted to…" He cast his eyes around the room until they landed on a dark yellow stone sitting on a pedestal beside his desk. "I just wanted to give him this amber," he said hollowly. "I thought he might give me his opinion. I didn't want to talk to him about anything, really." The redheaded woman regarded him silently.

Lance had watched this exchange with a mixture of confusion and concern. "So the stone was all, Garrett?"

"Yes," Garrett answered. "The stone was all."

"Well, I'll have Brock pick it up from you and get it to me, then, if that's all right," Lance said, his mind drifting back toward Celadon. "Garrett, don't take this the wrong way, but you look like you need to see a doctor."

"He overworks himself," the woman told Lance, giving him another searching look. "We'll look after him now that you've said something. Thanks for your call."

Lance nodded and pressed the end call button, his mind torn between the situation with Erika and the thought that that entire phone conversation had been wrong. Garrett had been looking at him pleadingly, as if wanting him to realize something, but Lance had no idea what.

He couldn't go to Pewter. Not with Celadon in the possible state it was in. _Brock will look into it for me, _he thought. _If Garrett was willing to wait for my visit, it can't be urgent. _

He opened the vidscreen again and entered in Brock's number.

o

"So…do we just go in?"

"No, we stand out here waiting for the gym leader to come outside in this damn monsoon and serve us cookies," Seth said grumpily. For all his whining about staying in the pokemon center earlier, he was the one who had complained the most when the storm had let up enough to go outside again, Katie thought. The rain still poured down steadily, but the lightning and the thunder that had shaken the pokemon center's windows had gone after only an hour.

"We just go in," Ben confirmed. "Well, you do anyway." He stepped back from the gym's double doors. "It's supposed to be a tradition, for the challengers to open the door themselves. They make them big and heavy on purpose."

"The lady opens the door for herself, then," Katie joked to hide her nervousness. She placed her palms against one of the gigantic stone doors and pushed hard. She stumbled when it slid open more easily than she was prepared for, and turned to stare at Seth and Ben.

"Ten-year-olds have to be able to get inside too though," Seth remarked, fishing a small pack of cookies out of his bag and tearing it open. "Want one?"

Katie ignored him and stepped gingerly into the gym. Her footsteps echoed against stone floors, stone walls, a stone ceiling. After passing through a small, empty antechamber, she emerged into the gigantic battle room. She shielded her eyes against the harsh lights that illuminated the huge gray-and-brown arena, with trainer's platforms on each side hewn out of rough stone. There was a man only a few years older than herself crouching near the ground on the opposite side of the arena; he seemed to be feeding a small group of geodude from his hand. Noticing the approach of Katie and the others, he climbed to his feet, brushed his hands off on his pants, and walked out into the arena to meet them.

"Hey there," the man who must be Brock called to them. "I recognize two of you, at least." He nodded at Ben and at Seth, who grinned and waved. "How'd you end up traveling together?"

"It's a long story," Ben said, shaking Brock's hand. "Nice to see you again."

"And you," Brock replied. "And this lovely young lady," he continued, winking at Katie, "must be your sister, am I right? The famous—"

"Yeah," Ben interrupted, giving Brock a significant look. "This is Katie. We're here to cheer her on. This is her first gym battle."

"Right," Brock answered, raising his eyebrows. Katie was about to ask how he knew she was Ben's sister when he turned to look at her; her thoughts were buried under pure nervousness.

"I'm, um…" she stammered. "I've never done this before, so…um, good luck?"

Brock laughed pleasantly. "Not so fast," he told her. "No need to rush in before we've gotten introduced. I'm Brock, the leader of Pewter Gym. You might have heard of me, since I got totally pounded by both the young men you brought with you today."

"Hey, it was close," Ben objected while Seth grinned appreciatively.

Katie smiled. "They told me you're excitable."

"Nah, I can almost always control myself. What's the point of it if you don't have fun, right?" He extended his hand. "Can I see your pokedex?"

Katie produced it and Brock slid a small card through a slot she'd wondered about. He looked at the readout on the pokedex screen and returned it to her. "Not that I expected you to lie, but I have to check that this is really your first battle before we start."

"Why?" Katie wondered. "Won't the battle be the same regardless?"

"Oh no," Brock answered. "This is a pokemon league qualification battle, in your case the first of eight. That means this battle is a level one qualification exam. I need to know what level you're at so I can match the pokemon I use to the level I'm testing you for."

Katie's mouth dropped open. "Oh! Okay…I'm sorry, I thought…"

"You thought I'd just toss out a level sixty onix and trounce you?" Brock laughed. "That would be pointless. I know you've only been training a few weeks. My job isn't to crush you with high-level pokemon, at least not yet. It's to see whether you've reached what the pokemon league considers level one on the way to fighting the Elite Four. If you have, you get my badge to prove it. The next leader you face, assuming you beat me, will test you for level two, and on up until you have eight badges. Then you get to fight the Elite Four, and with them, it's no holds barred—there aren't any restrictions on the pokemon they can use against you. So we make you get to level eight before you fight them to make sure you're not wasting their time." He looked at Ben and Seth in surprise. "You didn't tell her all this? Both of you know how this works by now."

Ben looked sheepish. "I forgot to mention it."

"I thought she knew," Seth shrugged.

"Well, now she does," Brock answered, grinning at Katie again. "So how about a one-on-one match to get you started into this? After everything I've heard, I'm looking forward to seeing how you fight."

"Sure," said Katie, grinning back. She was still nervous (_everything he'd heard?)_, but Brock's easy confidence was contagious; it was hard not to feel relaxed around him.

Suddenly a young boy, ten or eleven years old and wearing shorts and a camping vest, ran into the arena from a back room. "Brock! Phone call! It's Lance and he won't leave a message even though I told him you've got a trainer here and you always say it's really disrespectful for a gym leader to –"

"Okay, Jerry, thanks. Tell him I'm coming," Brock cut the boy's rant off while Ben shifted and rolled his eyes."Sorry," he told Katie. "I'll make it fast."

"Take your time," Katie said, a little awed by even the mention of one of the Elite Four members. Brock hurried after Jerry.

"It looks like the rain's letting up a little. Let's go meet your sister at the museum after this," Ben was saying to Seth. "You'll like this place," he added to Katie. "They've got some pretty impressive fossils there." Katie nodded happily and Seth threw up his arms in mock victory.

"The museum?" Brock asked, jogging back up to their group. "Didn't mean to overhear, but you could do me a really big favor if you're really going there." He glanced at Ben. "Lance says his friend wants him to look at an item from the museum, but he can't make it down here to pick it up himself. So he asked me to pick it up for him. It sounds pretty urgent, but I hate to leave your sister waiting. If the two of you wouldn't mind, you could run to the museum and pick up the item while we battle. I'm sure Lance would trust you to get it to me."

"Hey, let's do it," Seth said. "I want to get on over there and see my sister."

Ben hesitated, curiosity at what Lance wanted to take a look at mixing with his worry of leaving Katie alone. "I guess…"

"It's fine," Katie told him. "I think I might battle better without an audience anyway. No offense," she added.

"We should be done by the time you get back," Brock said, pulling out a notepad and scribbling something onto it. "Show this to Garrett Davison and he should pass you the item. Thanks a lot for this."

"No problem," Seth said with a wave. "Break a leg," he said to Katie, flashing her one of his quick smiles.

"Yeah," Ben said, startled out of his musings. "Good luck."

The two of them walked out, leaving Katie and Brock alone.

"So," Brock said. "Once again. I'm Brock, leader of Pewter Gym and I accept your challenge on behalf of the pokemon league." He held out his hand, and Katie shook it. Brock looked down, surprised, at the scratches and scabs on her hand. "Where did you get those?"

Katie blanched. Of all the things she could discuss with a gym leader, her failure to train Charon properly was not the one she would have chosen. "Um…I have a spearow, and she…um…I won't be using her in the battle today," she finished lamely.

Brock surprised her by laughing. "Hey," he said, releasing her hand. "At least for you, the one who won't do what you say isn't an onix ten times your size and made out of solid rock." He winced. "I had some close calls in my early days."

Katie's shoulders relaxed; it seemed he wasn't going to scold her. He'd even had a disobedient pokemon himself. An onix…he had an onix…She flashed back on the picture she'd seen of onix in her pokedex. A giant stone snake…twenty-eight feet tall…more than four hundred pounds…

She cleared her throat. "You have an onix?" she asked, wishing her voice didn't sound so small.

"Oh, I have several," he said mischievously. "In fact, why don't you say hello?" He took a pokeball out of his vest pocket and tossed it. The monster appeared with a roar that shook the surrounding stones, and Katie couldn't help gasping. It was the most intimidating pokemon she'd ever seen.

"One on one?" Brock prodded, watching her reaction.

Katie swallowed. Her pokedex had said that grass moves were good against rock pokemon, but she was having trouble getting past the sheer size of the thing. She could all too easily picture Raptor being squeezed in merciless stone coils, or simply being crushed under the gigantic weight of the onix.

But she had to use someone, and she'd decided before they'd set out for the gym that she simply couldn't rely on Charon in a high-stakes fight. Before she could change her mind, she pulled the pokeball off her belt. "Go! Raptor!"

o

Rain lashed against the windows of the Pewter City Museum of Science, darkening them and making the museum's fluorescent ceiling lights seem over-bright. Ben and Seth paid their entrance fees and entered the exhibit hall, Ben trailing behind as Seth looked around for his sister. Ben paused for a moment to admire a perfect kabutops skeleton, stepping around a pair of young boys fighting with plastic Kabutops scythes and briefly wondering how the pokemon had made do with the scythelike claws in place of hands or fingers. On the other hand, he walked determinedly past the aerodactyl and dragonite exhibits, staring straight ahead until he reached the collection of moon rocks on the opposite wall, which he stopped to inspect.

"Mommy, clefairy!" cried a little girl who couldn't have been older than three. She pulled on her mother's shirt, pointing excitedly at the poster beside the glass case, which depicted cleffa, clefairy, and clefable dancing around a large rock. Ben suppressed a smile as the little girl did her own version of the clefairy dance around her mother.

"Hey!" Seth's voice, easily as excited as the little girl's, also carried across the exhibit hall in a similar manner. "Hey, over here! It's me!" He seemed to be shouting at a young woman who had just arrived through a door marked "Employees Only." The woman turned toward Seth's voice, finally resting her eyes on him. She didn't say anything.

Seth grinned, hurrying over to her. "Hey, Cat."

Seth's sister didn't resemble her brother as much as Ben had thought she would. Seth was tall and lanky; his sister was shorter, with a more solid build. Her nose was smaller, her face fuller, her hair more red than Seth's orange and her eyes a shade darker. Both siblings' nearly-translucent pale skin and the identical dusting of freckles across their faces, however, marked them as relatives.

"So what's up?" Seth asked. "What's so good here that's got you wanting to help them out instead of me? Not like I can't handle the fights myself."

He grinned again; Tabitha shrugged imperceptibly. Seth's visit seemed to have caught her off-guard. She was casting her eyes around the exhibit hall, resting them on each worker and scientist in turn.

"Whatever it is, you're done, right?" Seth went on. "Cause I'm thinking we should just ditch this place anyway and go on to Johto. I know we only need one more to get all eight here, but I dunno if we're ever gonna get to fight the damn guy. He's not in his gym and hasn't been for years, according to everyone in Viridian. I'm kinda sick of waiting for him."

Ben couldn't help noticing that Tabitha had yet to greet her brother, or, after her initial stare, look at him at all. At mention of the Viridian City gym, however, her eyes finally flickered back toward him. "The gym leader at Viridian won't return to his gym for a while yet. You should probably just give up on it and leave here."

"We can get to Johto from Viridian anyway," Seth nodded, Ben thought, as though he hadn't noticed the emphasized "you." "When can we—"

"I'm staying here," Tabitha told him. "I've still got work to do. Go to Johto yourself."

Seth gaped at her for a moment. "Wait, you—so we're not gonna fight any more gym leaders?"

"You can do what you want. I don't need any more badges," Tabitha replied. "I have more than enough to move freely around Kanto. And I'm quite involved in my work here."

"But what about…I mean, we were having fun going around…"

Tabitha elected not to answer this; she simply shrugged again and turned to walk away.

Seth looked lost. Ben didn't know what to say. "Listen," he tried finally. "The rain's letting up. Let's go and see this guy Lance wants me to see and then head back to the pokecenter. It looks like your sister's not going anywhere. You can talk her around tomorrow, after…" He cast around for a way to soften Tabitha's ruthlessness. "After she's had time to think about things."

Seth looked down at the younger boy. "You don't need to take care of me like you do Katie," he said coldly. "Not every guy guards his sister so close that it chokes her. What's up with that, anyway?"

Ben flushed and turned away in time to notice that Tabitha had stopped a few feet away and was listening to their conversation. When she caught him looking, her impassive face split into a bright smile, as though a switch had been flipped. "You wouldn't be looking for Garrett Davison, would you?" she asked him.

"Yeah, we are," Ben replied, surprised. "We're here on an errand from Brock and Lance." He showed Tabitha Brock's note. Behind him, Seth glanced at Tabitha uncertainly. "Do you know where we can find him?"

"Of course." Tabitha's smile remained, but her eyes seemed to be calculating something. "I'll take you to him right away."

o

"Look out!"

Katie flinched as a large rock hit the ground a few feet away from her. Raptor, the target of the rocks that Brock's onix continued to throw, seemed to be making himself dizzy trying to dodge them.

Katie watched nervously. Raptor needed to get closer to the onix to use his vine whip, but the rocks were preventing that. What to do?

"Get as close as you can, then stun spore, Raptor!" she called, hoping the cloud of paralyzing dust would reach Raptor's opponent. Raptor darted into the gap between two rocks that had landed close together and pointed his bulb at the onix, firing a yellow cloud which spread slowly over the field and made the onix flinch.

"Don't get discouraged, onix!" Brock called. "Keep at it! Rock throw again!"

With some difficulty, onix levered another of the gym's giant rocks and tossed it at Raptor. Katie flinched, but then realized what Raptor had done: the falling rock didn't hit him, but instead landed on top of the two rocks raptor was standing between, creating a roof over his hiding spot. Katie waited hopefully. Surely now, onix would…

"Pop him out of there!" Brock said enthusiastically. "Don't let him hide on you. Slam!" The gigantic pokemon reared up to full height over Raptor's rocks, preparing to crush them under his weight.

"Raptor, get out of there!" Katie called as the onix fell. "Leech seed!"

Raptor darted out from underneath the rocks before onix landed on them heavily. Before onix could recoil, Raptor fired a volley of seeds at him, which exploded when they hit, wrapping the rock pokemon in vines. Raptor drained health into himself, recovering his energy a little.

"Wrap him up, onix!" came Brock's order.

"Vine whip! Don't wait!" Katie yelled. "Climb!"

Before onix's coils could trap him, Raptor shot out twin vines that wrapped around one of onix's sections. He levered himself up out of reach of onix's tail and ran up his back to his head, securing himself with one of his vines and whipping onix repeatedly on the back of the neck with the other. When onix rolled himself over and fell to the ground, hoping to crush Raptor, the bulbasaur used his first vine to pull himself to the other side of onix's body, with the result that onix slammed into the ground, futilely, over and over, as Raptor continued to circle and hit him.

Katie worried that the small vine wouldn't do enough damage, but soon enough, unbelievably, onix fell to the ground with a crash and didn't get back up. Raptor had won. He struggled to recall his vine from under the weight of the massive pokemon, then ran back to Katie, the excitement of the battle giving him the energy to leap into her arms. Katie laughed and nuzzled his pleasantly cool neck.

"You did it," she whispered to him fiercely. "You brought down that gigantic thing."

Something hard tapped against the top of her head. Katie looked up, surprised, into the face of Brock, who had tapped her with a small, silver badge.

"Great battle," he told her with one of his grins. "You deserve this."

Katie grinned back. "I'll take it."

o

"You'll have to excuse the mess. The professor is a little…" Tabitha paused in his inspection of a bookshelf to smile tightly at Ben and Seth. "I suppose he's a little scattered at the moment. He was expecting Lance to come himself, I think. "

Ben glanced at Seth, who shrugged slightly. Garrett, the scientist Lance had sent them to meet, had seemed more than a little scattered. Since the boys had come into his office and explained their errand, the man had spilled a cup of tea, dropped a sheaf of papers, and cut his hand on a pair of scissors while attempting to brush the contents of his desk onto the floor. After this, he had hurriedly excused himself to take care of the wound.

"Lance told us he was too busy to make it on his own," remarked Tabitha, who had now knelt to gather up the spilled sheaf of papers. "It was kind of him to send anyone at all." She straightened up and smiled fleetingly at Ben. "It's unusual that someone of your age is on such friendly terms with the Champion. Did you keep in contact after your Elite Four battle?"

"We're not especially friendly," Ben replied guardedly before taking a drink of tea. "I was just in the area and he needed a favor. Brock was the one who actually asked me to do it."

"I see." Tabitha's gaze moved from Ben to Seth. "What about you, Seth? Have you made friends with Lance while I was away?"

Seth started at being addressed. "Nah, I've never talked to him, Cat. I just tagged along with this guy, to see you."

Tabitha visibly lost interest, turning away from her brother to place the stacked papers on Garrett's desk. When she turned back around, she addressed Ben. "I'm curious. What is it exactly that the Champion wants with the professor?"

Ben shrugged uncomfortably. In truth, he didn't know much, but something about the way Seth's sister stared at people was putting him off. "I don't have all the details, but it sounded like they were planning something top secret. I sort of doubt he wanted me to broadcast it around, frankly." He looked up at Tabitha with raised eyebrows.

Seth piped up. "Yeah, it sounded pretty important. Probably not the kind of thing an assistant needs to know about."

Tabitha's eyes narrowed for a split second before her smile returned. "Of course. I shouldn't have pried."

"It's really nothing to concern yourself over, Tabitha," Professor Garrett said cheerfully as he walked back into the room, his hand bandaged. "I simply wanted Lance's opinion on the museum's newest fossil." He reached into his lab coat with his unbandaged hand, drawing out a dark yellow stone. Ben, Seth, and Tabitha stared at it.

"This is amber," Garrett explained, placing the stone in a small lavender pouch and handing it to Ben. "You may have heard that we're experimenting here with resurrecting pokemon from fossils. There's a possibility that this amber contains the DNA of aerodactyl, an ancient pokemon. As a dragon trainer, Lance has always had an interest in aerodactyl, so I thought he might like to see this."

Tabitha frowned. At the mention of aerodactyl, Ben's fingers slipped; he caught the pouch before it dropped. "I'll give this to Brock as soon as I can."

"That would be perfect," Garrett answered, but his smile had gone. He turned around and busied himself with his desktop computer. "I appreciate you taking the trouble."

Ben broke the awkward silence that followed. "I should probably be going. My sister ought to be done with her gym battle by now." He looked at Seth. "Are you…?"

Seth glanced at Tabitha, who paid no attention. "I want to see how Katie did, too. I guess I'll be staying at the pokecenter for a while, until…I dunno." He tossed another disconcerted look at his sister.

Ben nodded and the two of them left the room, led somewhat reluctantly by Tabitha. Behind them, Garrett's fists clenched into his bandages, reopening the wound.

o

Katie approached the museum at a run, a humming Raptor still clutched to her chest. The rain had let up; her tennis shoes splashed through puddles as leftover rainclouds drifted past the sun overhead. She hoped the boys were still at the museum; now that she was no longer occupied with nerves, she wanted to see the exhibits and she was curious to meet the sister Seth talked about so much.

As her squelching footsteps reached the end of the path, she heard a familiar laugh. She ran around to the side of the museum to find Seth battling another trainer, a brown-haired boy of around fifteen. The other boy was recalling a gengar; Seth, congratulating his kecleon.

"Focus energy, machoke!" Seth's opponent yelled as he sent out a new pokemon, and kecleon leaped backward as his new opponent's eyes glowed red.

"Lick it while it's distracted, kecleon!" Seth called. A long, reptilian pink tongue shot out of kecleon's mouth to rub against machoke's shoulder. The attack seemed to faze the machoke; he grimaced and twitched as if he'd received a shock.

Katie pushed her way through the spectators and stopped next to Ben and a redheaded woman she'd never seen. Panting, she laid Raptor down beside her. "Sorry I'm late."

Ben raised his eyebrows questioningly; Katie beamed at him and he grinned. "Good job," he told her, kneeling to scratch Raptor under his chin.

"You okay, machoke?" the other trainer was asking. Machoke flexed his muscles and nodded."OK, then! Rock throw!"

Machoke picked up one of the large stones that seemed omnipresent in Pewter and hurled it at kecleon; despite the smaller pokemon's agility, the rock clipped its leg as it dodged. As Katie watched, fascinated, kecleon's skin changed color, rippling and fading from dull green to dark gray.

"Great, machoke! Now—low kick!"

Machoke moved jerkily, still shocked by the lick attack, but he made a solid hit and kecleon went flying.

"Whoa," Seth said as kecleon hit the museum wall and sank to the ground. He recalled it and grinned at the other trainer, spreading his hands. "You got me. Good thing this is two-on-two." Appearing completely confident, he pulled an ultraball from his belt and tossed it.

Katie gasped. Seth's pokemon was enormous, a gigantic tan beast standing on two massive legs. It flexed its wings and bent back its head to let out a roar that shook the ground. Pokemon, trainer, and spectators alike fell silent, staring.

Ben opened his mouth and shrieked. Katie whirled around in alarm; her brother's eyes were wide, his body rigid. He fumbled in his bag with shaking hands, throwing it aside and hurling a pokeball at Seth's dragonite. An alakazam appeared in a flash of light.

"Ben?" Katie said, frightened, as Raptor worriedly rubbed against Ben's ankles. "What's going on? What's wrong?"

Her brother seemed unable to speak after the scream. His alakazam made a worried sort of hum, looking from him to Seth's dragonite to the other trainer's machoke, unsure of what was going on. Ben's legs gave out and he sat down on the ground, hard, still staring in mute terror at the dragon.

Katie didn't know either. "Recall it!" she yelled to Seth.

Seth was already doing so. As the dragon faded into red light, Ben closed his eyes and breathed deeply. His alakazam sat down on the ground beside him, placing its hand on his shoulder in the same way a human might do.

Katie sat on the other side of Ben and took his hand, which felt cold and sweaty. "Hey," she said. "You okay?"

The brown-haired trainer was talking to Seth, asking him to leave the battle a draw, but Seth wasn't paying attention, instead looking at Ben with an unreadable expression.

Alakazam's hand was glowing on Ben's shoulder; the light seemed to calm Ben down. He opened his eyes. "Thanks, Blackpearl. Sorry." He recalled his pokemon and got to his feet without looking at Katie. He took his bag from the redheaded woman, who offered it to him with an expression much like Seth's, and began to walk shakily toward the pokemon center, Katie following anxiously behind him.

o

That night in the pokemon center, Katie had trouble sleeping. Her excitement over winning her first badge had been overshadowed by the scene in front of the museum. Ben hadn't wanted to talk about it, smiling sheepishly and mumbling something about dragon pokemon "having that effect" on him. Ben had used to enjoy looking at pictures of dragon pokemon. Katie supposed something must have happened since then, but didn't feel comfortable asking. It was something else that had changed about him while she had been away.

She was also worried about Seth. The redheaded boy's eyes had darkened when Katie had asked him if the young woman who had picked up Ben's bag had been his sister Tabitha. He'd brooded the rest of the evening; Ben had told her quietly that their meeting hadn't gone well. She'd thought she ought to try and cheer him up, but he'd been so hard to approach, rebuffing every attempt with a glare or a one-word answer. Between the two of them, going to bed had been a relief.

She turned over and hugged her pillow. Seth still planned to leave with his sister tomorrow, he'd said. She would be sad to see him go. Since Seth already had all the Kanto badges except Viridian's, she knew there was no reason for him to travel with them any longer, but she'd miss his cheerfulness, though she wasn't sure Ben would.

She wondered if she'd have any trouble getting the Viridian gym badge when the time came. When her eyes finally closed, she dreamed of onix and dragons, and that she held the pokeballs that contained the creatures that towered over her.

"So all he wanted to show Lance was some fossil? That seems odd." Brock scratched his head. "Lance said it sounded urgent."

Ben shrugged into the vidphone. "He was a weird guy. Maybe Lance misunderstood."

"All right," Brock answered. "I'll give you his number if you want to send it on over to him."

"Nah, you have it," Ben replied, searching through his bag. "I don't feel like talking to that guy if I can help it." He frowned. Hadn't he put the pouch containing the amber in the inside left pocket?

"It's gone," he said finally.

"Gone?"

"Yeah—hang on." Ben began taking items out of his bag. The pouch was nowhere to be found. He sat on the floor of the pokemon center, stunned. "Brock, I think I've lost it."

Brock raised his eyebrows. "That's not like you. You sure you didn't put it somewhere else?"

"It's not here. It must have fallen out when I fell yesterday afternoon—unless…" At that moment, Seth and Katie walked through the doors of the pokemon center. "Brock, I'll call you back." He switched off the vidphone and strode over to Seth. "Listen, did—what's wrong?"

Seth's blue eyes were dark, his mouth a tight line. Behind him, Katie was white as a sheet. "Did something happen?"

Katie opened her mouth, but Seth nudged her and pointed to the pokemon center television, which, as usual, was playing the news. Katie sank into an armchair and hugged herself, looking miserable. Ben turned to watch the screen.

"We now bring you a shocking piece of local news," the anchor was saying. "Professor Garrett Davison of the Pewter City Museum was found dead this morning, the victim of an apparent assault. Medical examiners tell us that Professor Davison was involved in a fight that led to him falling to his death from his third-story office window." The news anchor looked down at her notes. "Police have supposed that this may have been a robbery, but Pewter museum scientists say that the only item missing, a piece of fossilized amber, would sell cheaply, being valuable only for research purposes. Given this fact, police are not yet certain of the motive behind Professor Davison's death."

Ben sat down heavily in the chair beside Katie's. Seth came to stand between them, staring at the television as the news moved to the next story.

"My sister's gone," Seth said, breaking the silence. "When we got to the museum, it was roped off, but the employees that were still there said she never showed up this morning. The police had looked for her in case she'd gotten hurt too, but all they found was that her locker'd been cleaned out."

Ben rested his forehead in his hand. Could the fossil have been more important than Brock and Lance had thought? Why had Garrett wanted Lance to have it? And what the hell had happened to it? He'd have to tell the police he'd taken it from the museum and lost it before he left the city, but what if that drew unwanted attention to Lance? What if this had to do with…

When he looked back up, it was at Seth. "Did you take the fossil out of my bag when you gave it back to me yesterday, after I freaked out?" he asked, trying to make it a question rather than an accusation.

Seth took a while to reply. "I didn't give your bag to you," he said, his voice oddly flat. "Tabitha did."

o

Lance put a cooling hand to his forehead. He looked up at the vidscreen. "Do you realize the accusation you're making here? If this woman stole the fossil and disappeared from her job, she might have been the one responsible for the murder."

Ben shook his head. "It's not that I'm making an accusation exactly, but she is the only one besides Katie and Seth who both knew where the fossil was and touched my bag. I was—distracted at the time." He averted his eyes a little. "I owe you an apology for not keeping a better eye on it."

Lance looked at him bleakly. "I blew Garrett off. It should have been me that went to talk to him. He was almost crying when he called me, but I just didn't have the…" He shook his head. "If anything, we're both at fault."

There was nothing to say to that. Lance finally broke the silence. "I'll explain to the police. You should leave Pewter as soon as possible to avoid gathering too much attention." He looked up at Ben. "There's trouble in Celadon," he said bluntly. "Organized crime, pokemon smuggling. Erika's having trouble putting a stop to it on her own. I don't want to make you paranoid, but there's always the chance it's connected to Sabrina's prediction. Keep it to yourself, but be on the lookout if you find yourself there." He shifted. "They're calling themselves Team Rocket."

Ben shook his head. "Never heard the name." He hesitated. "Do you think Prof—this thing with the fossil—I don't want to be paranoid either, but…it wasn't important, was it? That fossil?" He looked at Lance almost pleadingly. "The people at the museum swear up and down that all it was good for was, theoretically, bringing an extinct species of pokemon to life."

"An aerodactyl," Lance answered. "It's hard to see how that could be so terrible. Aerodactyl isn't said to be overly powerful compared to existing species of pokemon." He shook his head. "Unless Team Rocket is interested in DNA research for some reason, I can't imagine why they'd want with it."

"Yeah." Ben looked over his shoulder. "We're going to Cerulean next. I won't be able to contact anyone from Mt. Moon, so that probably means a few days."

"All right," Lance answered. "I should get going too. I need to check in with Erika." Ben nodded and closed the connection.

Mt. Moon, Lance thought. That should be safe enough; as the only route between two cities with gyms, it was well-trafficked by trainers. If Lance remembered correctly, it should be even more crowded now than normal; Brock had told him that a research company connected to the museum had set up shop on the bottom-most level to dig for—

Lance gripped the edge of his desk. _Shit…_

o

"All right," Ben said. "We should head to Cerulean next, since there's another gym there. " He smiled a bit at Katie. "Raptor'll help you out there too." Katie, who was still sober from the news of Garrett's death, nodded, then said, "Let's invite Seth to go with us."

Ben looked at her, not answering.

"He says he's going to Johto, but I don't think he means it, Ben," his sister wheedled. "He's scared his sister's in trouble, or might be involved with what happened, and from what you said, she wasn't too thrilled to see him in the first place." Katie glanced over at Seth, who was dozing on a couch next to them. "You know how he is. He doesn't like being by himself. I don't want to dump him off the day after his sister did." She looked seriously at Ben. "I know you don't like him much, but if I'd come back from university, and you told me to get lost, I wouldn't want to be left by myself either."

Ben chewed his lip. He was no longer worried that Seth might be a liability, or connected to the trouble in Sabrina's prediction, but Katie didn't realize that keeping Seth around her was putting him in danger, especially if Tabitha was involved with Team Rocket. On the other hand…she was right about Seth. Ben thought about it, and realized with some surprise that he didn't want to abandon the redheaded boy either.

He reached over and shook Seth awake, eliciting a noise of protest. "The hell? I was sleeping."

"We're going," Ben replied. "I bet the three of us can make it to Mt. Moon within the week." Seth looked at him. Ben shrugged and pointed to Katie. "She likes you. God knows why."

Ben was afraid Seth would explode, saying he didn't want their pity or that he could take care of himself. And for a moment, it seemed like he was fighting with himself about something. But when he spoke, it was with a half-smile. "She likes me because I'm damn awesome," he said, trying to inject some cheerfulness into his voice. "Can't help hanging around once you get to know me."

Katie smiled radiantly at him, and Seth tugged her hair affectionately before standing and sliding his arms into his jacket.

o

"I don't remember asking for police involvement in Pewter."

"One of our operatives…overreacted," Giovanni said delicately. "She will of course be disciplined appropriately. In the end, the dead man may have been more trouble to us alive, since he was attempting to contact Lance." He shifted in his chair. "Our men in Pewter will handle the police. It is a minor matter."

"You're responsible for ensuring that it is," she answered. "I don't want the investigation into the museum to upset the operation at Mt. Moon."

Giovanni curled his lip. "We'll keep digging even if we have to do it without the museum's permission. They belong to us, after all."

"You thought Garrett Davison belonged to you," she answered, not unamused. "Though I must admit, the police attention is almost worth seeing how inconsolable Lance is. His poor, helpless little friend came crying to him, and the big strong Champion let him die." She threw her head back and laughed, the sound echoing around the stone chamber.

Giovanni waited politely for her to finish before remarking, "The grunts…the operatives…at Mt. Moon are eager for the work, and so far there has been no interference. Shall we continue working as we have been?"

"Oh, dig it dry," she answered merrily. "Tell them I'm _ecstatic _to get a good report from you, and remind them how rewarding the dig will be in the end."

"When we sell the fossils for money," Giovanni said neutrally.

His master turned the worthless amber over in her hands. "Tell them that, if you like."

o

A/N: Hope that was enjoyable enough to be worth the wait. XD It was sure long enough. *shakes out fingers* Next destination: Mt. Moon and a storm of trouble for basically everyone.


End file.
